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After last nights nightmare, where you had the captain of the team telling the media that he didn’t get the group fired enough to play against a team in last place and the coach basically deflecting all blame and placing it on the players, you really didn’t know how tonight’s game against a Lehigh Valley team on a tear would go.

So of course it’s a blowout by the Penguins and everything is made up and the points don’t matter.

Penguins roll tonight 7-3.

It was a feisty, testy affair. The Penguins clearly came to the rink tonight pissed off at themselves at the embarrassment from the night before in Hershey. There were 110 penalty minutes. Wilkes-Barre played with aggression all night, maintained their composure when they went down a goal in the second period, got inspired efforts from the likes of Jimmy Hayes and solid goaltending from Tristan Jarry and crush one of their biggest rivals on their home ice.

Jimmy Hayes had his best game as a Penguin tonight. Clark Donatelli put him on a line with the gritty Joseph Cramarossa and the speedy J-S Dea. It worked. Hayes had a goal and an assist and a team leading four shots on goal.

The seven goals put up by the Penguins was the most goals scored in a game all season.

Tristan Jarry opposed Alex Lyon.

Lines were…

Lineup Notes: Pat McGrath and Troy Josephs were in ups front for Linus Ölund and Ryan Haggerty and Kevin Spinozzi yielded to Jeff Taylor.

Tristan Jarry was ill last night, and I really was expecting John Muse to go tonight but it was Jarry that got the start.

First Period: Very chippy period on both sides. After this fight between Anthony Angello and Philip Samuelsson…

…Garrett Wilson and Tyrell Goulbourne fought in a secondary altercation. You can’t do that, so both players were given game misconducts and thrown out of the game.

The Cramarossa – Dea – Hayes line in one shift created two shots, hit and created turnovers. A good sequence to see.

Wilkes-Barre killed the only penalty of the period successfully. Shots were 10-9 Penguins.

Second Period: Penguins found themselves in early penalty trouble and Greg Carey made them pay with this goal on the power play.

Looked like it beat Jarry over the glove. A well placed shot, nonetheless.

But then the Penguins would score twice very quickly as Ben Sexton struck for his third goal of the week, all coming against the Phantoms with this goal that tied the game.

Face-off, shot, Adam Johnson there for the follow-up who finds Sexton on the doorstep for the cleanup.

Then, Jimmy Hayes broke in and scored his first goal since November 14 at Springfield.

Horrific turnover by T.J. Brennan there gift wrapping a breakaway chance for Hayes who finished.

Penguins would finally get a crack on the power play and would waste no time in scoring to extend their lead over the Phantoms to 3-1 on this Teddy Blueger redirect that was initially shot by J-S Dea.

Penguins outshot the Phantoms 15-10 in the period despite giving up two power plays to the Phantoms.

Third Period: Here is your turning point of the game.

Flurry of saves by Tristan Jarry, then minutes later Adam Johnson scores on a breakaway that makes it 4-1 Wilkes-Barre.

Whatever momentum that the Phantoms wanted to build coming out for the third was squelched by the Jarry saves and then the Johnson goal, which stood up as the game winner tonight.

Teddy Blueger scored his second of the game that made it 5-1 right at the half way point of the third.

Reece Willcox scored on a rebound of a shot that Jarry couldn’t cover entirely that made it 5-2.

Phantoms head coach Kerry Huffman pulled Alex Lyon and Ben Sexton hit the empty net which made it 6-2.

T.J. Brennan scored off of a face-off that made it 6-3.

Huffman pulled Lyon again and Chad Ruhwedel, almost by mistake, scored from 180′ away when he flipped a puck out of his own end that found the empty net that made it 7-3.

No GIFs on these, sorry.

Late, Joseph Cramarossa was given an instigating penalty as the game was devolving into a slugfest. Unless it’s rescinded (they never are) he will be suspended for Monday’s game in Binghamton.

The Good: Jimmy Hayes. One game doesn’t define a season, but Hayes finally put it all together tonight and helped set the tone for the road team in an impressive win against a rival. Hopefully, a veteran like Hayes uses a night like this as something he can build off of. I guess we will see Monday in Binghamton.

The Bad: Nitpicking, but another power play goal against is a small blemish on a bright night for the Penguins.

Three Stars: 

Around the Division: Charlotte beats Laval 5-4 in overtime, Bridgeport does the same to Hartford 3-2, Providence beats Hershey 4-1 and Syracuse beats Springfield 4-3 in overtime.

Standings: Charlotte 50 — Bridgeport 47 — Lehigh Valley 41 — Penguins 37 — Springfield 36 — Providence 33 — Hartford 32 — Hershey 28

Wheeling Update: The Nailers were off.

Video Highlights: 

Pens are off Sunday. Springfield travels to Hartford burning off one of their three games in hand on the Penguins. That’s a game you should pay attention to Sunday afternoon if you aren’t doing anything.

Penguins are back in action Monday at 6 p.m. in Binghamton for New Years Eve. Check out the Gameday setup here on the blog Monday at 2.

Let’s Go Pens!

       vs.       

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Friend from out of town sent me the following text tonight which kind of in jest summarizes this game nicely.

“The Penguins celebrated 80s night like they were a VHS tape, unfortunately the Hershey Bears were the VCR and ate them.”

In what can only be classified as the worst game that the Wilkes-Barre / Scranton Penguins have played all season, a 5-1 loss to the last place Hershey Bears, the team on a whole was outclassed.

Head Coach Clark Donatelli to the media postgame:

I don’t like this quote. I don’t like this quote for many reasons and the first one that jumps into my mind is the deflection from the coaching staff and placing the sole responsibility of the loss tonight on the players. Sure, you can say that the coaches come up with a game plan and it’s up to the players to execute, but that quote doesn’t sit well with me.

Another nugget from tonight was Tom’s opinion on something tonight when the game was well out of hand in the third period.

I don’t agree with this either and let Tom know as such. It would be seen as a desperate Hail Mary which wouldn’t work. There are far more skilled teams in this League than there were 5, 10, 15 years ago. Sending a message to the players in a developmental league by pulling up guys from the ECHL who aren’t going to magically save your season by scoring goals or stopping the other team from doing so is only going to drive more of a wedge in between the players and coaches and make you fall further into the abyss of obscurity.

Look, this is what you can expect when you sell off prospects and draft picks that get you your prospects in the name of winning two Stanley Cups in the last three years. You get a hodgepodge of washed up forwards like Jimmy Hayes mixed in with promising prospects like Teddy Blueger and Adam Johnson to go with a defense led by Ethan Prow and a bunch of defensemen right now that are either hurt (Trotman and Summers) or learning on the fly (Matt Abt, Jeff Taylor) and making up for nightly errors of Will O’Neill, who was rightly scratched tonight.

Teddy Blueger, Ethan Prow and Tristan Jarry are your best prospects at each position. That’s it. You can make cases for J-S Dea and Garrett Wilson, but they are beyond the ‘prospect’ phase of their careers. On defense you have nothing besides Prow that looks anything close to an NHL ready defenseman. Anthony Peters is an AHL only goalie and John Muse is in the land of Dea and Wilson. Sam Lafferty, Adam Johnson, Anthony Angello are all too green right now and haven’t, quite frankly, established themselves enough as players ready to breakout and make the next step.

Taking all that in, it’s hard to win games. Firing Clark Donatelli because he’s not Mike Sullivan, John Hynes or Dan Bylsma before him isn’t going to turn the ship around.

Bill Guerin is the General Manager. He built this team. His fill-ins around Prow, Blueger and Jarry aren’t cutting it. Clark Donatelli just tries to work with what he is given on a nightly basis.

Anyway, here’s your game story.

The Penguins went down 2-0 two minutes into the game when Nathan Walker scored :16 in and then Grant Beese at 2:00 and the rout was on for the Bears. It was at that point, in hindsight, that I would have took starting goalie Anthony Peters out of the game and replaced him with backup John Muse.

But they didn’t.

The Penguins actually played quite well in the final eighteen minutes of the period, but Steve Whitney and Mike Sgarbossa scored second period goals on busted coverage plays that made it 4-0 before Joseph Cramarossa scored on a nice give and go with Jarrett Burton that made it 4-1 heading into the third period.

Here is Cramarossa’s goal.

But then Garrett Pilon scored on a snipe that handcuffed Peters that made it 5-1 2:08 into the third and the rout was on.

Sorry about the lack of GIFs on those goals. I rely on Taylor Haase for those, but she’s on a well deserved break I think and didn’t tweet anything tonight for Wilkes-Barre or Wheeling. She deserves the break, she works hard and is good at what she does.

That’s basically it. Here’s how they lined up tonight:

Cramarossa replaced Ryan Scarfo up front and yes, that’s Chad Ruhwedel on defense. Pittsburgh sent him here on 14-day conditioning loan. He remains on Pittsburgh’s 23 man roster. Ethan Prow returned from injury and Wilkes-Barre called up Kevin Spinozzi, who leads the ECHL in points by a defenseman, on Friday. Will O’Neill, Jeff Taylor and Tim Erixon were odd men out.

Vitek Vanecek started in goal for Hershey. He wasn’t really challenged tonight, stopping 22 of 23 shots.

Three penalties total in the game, none in the third. Uninspired effort by Wilkes-Barre all around. Embarrassing. People paid money to watch this trash tonight.

May I mention that it’s the same Bears team that lost 11-1 over the course of two games to Lehigh Valley last week?

Here are your highlights.

Lehigh Valley beat Providence and Bridgeport beat Springfield. Charlotte lost to Laval. Hartford was off.

Bad loss? It’s always worse some where else.

Penguins and Thunderbirds are tied with 35 points but Springfield has three games in hand. Lehigh Valley is pulling away with 41 points and three games in hand on Wilkes-Barre and Bridgeport (34 games played) has 45 points and Charlotte (33) has 48.

Behind the Pens are Hartford and Providence (32 games played) with 31 points and Hershey (32) with 28.

Wheeling loses a close one in Kalamazoo tonight, 6-5. They put up a fight. Alex Rauter had a goal and three assists.

Penguins are back in action Saturday in Allentown. Gameday setup will be up Saturday at 3.

       vs.       

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Quick aside, something to be thankful for: This is the last work night home game until March 6. There are actually just two left. Kindly mind any spelling or format errors as the game story was thumbed out on my iPhone. You may be lucky enough to have this week off before the New Year, but I burned off the last of my vacation time last week.

Anyway, enough about me.

The Wilkes-Barre / Scranton Penguins had this game in the bag early, but then lost it in the end due to a questionable onside play and the fact that their defense is in big time flux with dependable blue liners injured. Penguins lose 5-3. A late goal by Tyrell Goulbourne pushed the Phantoms ahead with 1:02 left in regulation.

A bad way to lose, yes, with how close things are right now in the division. It looked like the Penguins were on track for two points, then maybe one, ultimately none.

Tristan Jarry opposed Alex Lyon.

Lines were…

Lineup Notes: Ethan Prow missed the game due to presumed injury. He is indeed just day to day per Clark to the Pens media postgame. As a result, the defense pairings were all shook up from Saturday. Tim Erixon replaced Prow and as a result that forced Joe Cramarossa out of the lineup due to the veteran rule. Jarrett Burton, who was scratched Saturday, slotted in on the fourth line and Ryan Scarfo replaced Cramarossa on the second.

First Period: These types of periods coming out of holiday breaks are dangerous because they can be traps. Lehigh Valley played decent, but took two penalties and had Ben Sexton tag them for all the offense in the period.

Sexton’s first came after Adam Johnson broke in and was stopped by Lyon. His follow up try was also denied, but hit the post and was there for Sexton to sweep in for his first of the season.

Sexton would strike again with 2.3 seconds left to play in the period when his low angle shot eluded Lyon which gave the Penguins a 2-0 lead heading to the first intermission.

Second Period: Penguins would keep the pressure on and lead in shots for a good amount of the period. But Lehigh Valley continued to test Jarry and the Pens netminder was successful.

But a bad outlet pass by Jeff Taylor found Reece Willcox instead and Willcox left a pass for Tyrell Goulbourne who finally solved Jarry to cut it to one.

But, the Penguins would strike again before the clock hit midnight again when Jeff Taylor’s dump in took a funny bounce right to Teddy Blueger who had a wide open net to shoot at when Lyon left his crease to play it.

Taylor atones for his previous error.

Third Period: Lehigh Valley gets one back quickly to open the frame when a Phillipe Myers shot is redirected in by Taylor Leier in front.

Then, Connor Bunnaman scores on a breakaway. Initially it looked like he was offside by a foot, but linesman Jud Ritter who has a history of calls that usually go against the Penguins, deemed it clean.

No way to definitively say yes / no on that. Clark postgame to Tyler…

Phantoms score late when a puck is redirected pulling Jarry out of position when Tyrell Goulbourne scored with 62 seconds left to edge the Phantoms ahead.

Phantoms score again off the faceoff when a routine dump in handcuffs Jarry that made it 5-3.

(no GIF of this sequence that I saw)

Pens shellshocked with Jarry pulled, saw the game end with the arena chanting, “Let’s Go Phantoms!”

Three Stars: 

The Good: The start was fine. Going up 2-0 in the first was the perfect way to set up the second and third.

The Bad: Can’t blame special teams here. Pens couldn’t defend a lead with the vertebraes of defense (Prow, Trotman, Summers) injured. It’s a concern going forward.

Around the Division: They all watched us.

Standings: Charlotte 48 — Bridgeport 41 — Lehigh Valley 39 — Springfield 37 — Penguins 35 — Hartford 31 — Providence 31 — Hershey 26

Wheeling Update: Nailers, along with the entire ECHL, were off tonight.

Video Highlights: I will catch up on this later if I see any when I get home or Thursday morning.

Check out the Week 12 AHL Power Rankings Thursday around 11 a.m.

Next game is Friday against Hershey. Look for the Gameday setup here against the Bears Friday at 3.

Let’s Go Pens!