Chirps from Center Ice

Bringing the Rapid Recap out of the moth balls for a night to briefly touch on Friday’s throttling of the Hartford Wolf Pack by the Wilkes-Barre / Scranton Penguins. Pens win 7-1. I don’t think it is a bellwether of the weekend, though, because Hartford is a bad team.

Seven different scorers for the Penguins in the form of Mathias Laferrière, Avery Hayes, Valterri Puustinen, Vasily Ponomarev, Ville Koivunen, Atley Calvert and Rutger McGroarty.

An array of depth (Laferrière, Calvert) scoring, some secondary (McGroarty, Hayes) and top line (Puustinen, Koivunen, Ponomarev) scoring as well. A balanced night.

Filip Larsson stopped 24 of 25, with Nathan Sucese getting him in the first period.

The Pens trailed 1-0 after one, but got goals :31 apart in the second and :37 apart in the third to break it wide open.

Nikolai Knyzhov had three assists for a guy who has been a scratch the last ten games. No reason to take him out of the lineup whatsoever. He’s steady.

For posterity and because I use this to compare / contrast the next lineup, here’s how they lined up:

https://twitter.com/WBSPenguins/status/1898154611174785075

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Lineup Notes: Koppanen, Poulin back. Gabe Klassen and Boris Katchouk out of the lineup. Knyzhov took the place of Jack St. Ivany who went up as insurance for Pittsburgh.

NHL trade deadline saw the Pittsburgh Penguins amass a ton of draft picks. The only collateral loss is Jonathan Gruden to New Jersey. I liked the kid. A pot stirrer. He will be good in Utica / New Jersey.

Out of town, Hershey and Providence win to stay ahead of the Pens the same amount of points as they came into the day. Charlotte was idle.

Back to a more conventional write-up Saturday.

Let’s Go Pens!

Woof.

They went down 4-0, battled back to make it 4-2, but go down 6-2. Filip Lindberg lasted about half the game before getting chased. They had 1:57 of two man they couldn’t do anything with.

A recap of this monstrosity will follow shortly.

Two power play goals and a pair of goals by Radim Zohorna are enough to propel the Penguins over yet another win over Lehigh Valley, this time a 4-2 win.

More soon….

It took them forever, but they finally got the knockout blow they didn’t seem to find in regulation.

Kasper Bjorkqvist scored in overtime to sent the Penguins home 2-1 winners in overtime against a pesky and quick Hartford Wolf Pack club.

More soon.

They looked about as disjointed and discombobulated as you could today.

A 4-1 loss, an opposing goalie who played very well and no puck luck. You’ll have like games like these.

More in a bit.

Pretty gritty way to start the season if you ask me.

30 saves by Filip Lindberg and goals from Valtteri Puustinen and Nicolas Almari and the Wilkes-Barre / Scranton Penguins are 1-0 to start the season with a 2-1 win at home against the Phantoms Saturday night.

More in a bit.

35 saves from Casey DeSmith and two goals by two guys named Kevin (Roy and Czuczman) and the Wilkes-Barre / Scranton Penguins take down the Hershey Bears 2-1.

Kill was 4/4. No power plays for the Pens tonight. A complete effort.

More in a bit.