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6                                          5

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Most exciting game in recent memory against two heavyweight teams. The Wilkes-Barre / Scranton Penguins and Lehigh Valley Phantoms duked it out in a knock down, drag out contest that saw the Penguins win the game in a shootout 6-5 on the only goal scored in the exhibition gallery from Christian Thomas in the bottom of the third round.

Thomas, who is leaving for Finland to participate in the Karjala Cup on Sunday, which is going to be used as an evaluation for Team Canada for the upcoming 2018 Winter Olympics had an all around great game and the game winning shootout goal was just the icing on the cake.

Heippa, by the way, is “goodbye” in the Finnish language. Now you know. Something else you should know is that the Penguins have won six games in a row.

With the win and the Providence regulation loss to Bridgeport, the Wilkes-Barre / Scranton Penguins are in sole possession of first place of the Atlantic Division.

Casey DeSmith opposed Dustin Tokarski.

Lines were…

Dominik Simon – Adam Johnson – Christian Thomas
Garrett Wilson – Gage Quinney – Daniel Sprong
Zach Aston-Reese — J-S Dea — Ryan Haggerty
Tom Sestito – Teddy Blueger – Thomas Di Pauli

Andrey Pedan – Lukas Bengtsson
Kevin Czuczman – Kevin Spinozzi
Chris Summers – Ethan Prow

Casey DeSmith – Colin Stevens

Lineup Notes: Colin Smith, Jarred Tinordi and Jeff Taylor practiced in full this week and are expected back soon. As mentioned in the open, Christian Thomas will leaving Sunday for the Karjala Cup. Read more about it all that here. Tom Kostopoulos was out injured again, word is a day-to-day, upper body injury for the Penguins captain.

First Period: An all out assault by the Phantoms to open, who jumped out to a quick 5-0 lead in shots then got a power play. But the Penguins forecheck on the penalty kill forced a turnover to Garrett Wilson who was robbed by Tokarski in this sequence….

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Someone should alert Lehigh Valley social that Tokarki’s nickname (when he was with Norfolk) was, “tick.” Perhaps it is still is.

I’ll let Tyler set up how the Phantoms scored even strength…

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…and Taylor will show you how it looked…

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The first even strength goal allowed by Casey DeSmith this season in 130:54.

Penguins withstood a relentless charge by the Phantoms to end the period aided by a 4:00 high sticking penalty against them when Chris Summers caught Danick Martel with a high stick off of a a face-off. The Penguins got lucky when the referee lost sight of a puck that was loose in DeSmith’s crease but were able to kill both ends of the double minor.

Second Period: Penguins get on the board with Gage Quinney’s fourth goal of the season, digging a puck out of the pads of Tokarski to tie the game at one a piece.

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Penguins started the period with a blitzkrieg on the Phantoms to start the period but unlike the Phantoms, were able to get goals. On a power play, Christian Thomas scored this goal after this ridiculous pass by Dominik Simon in front…

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10 points this season for Dominik Simon.

Then, a wild sequence for both teams.

With Kevin Spinozzi in the box for a bonkers play where it appeared (to me) that Mark Friedman comes in offsides and then is tripped by Spinozzi, Danick Martel blew a tire and J-S Dea skated in, faked Tokarski into a poke check and scored shorthanded to make it 3-1 Penguins….

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Pens about to blow the game open, right?

Wrong.

Danick Martel atones for the last play and scores to bring the Phantoms back to within one.

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He walked DeSmith out of his crease like a dog out of his coop there.

Wild :45 of play, where both teams score on special teams.

Pens had a goal taken away when Garrett Wilson made contact with Tokarski. Referee Tim Mayer correctly disallowed the would be goal by Ethan Prow immediately.

Small turning point for the Phantoms who get goals by T.J. Brennan, a seeing eye deal that DeSmith never saw…

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Then Mikhail Vorobyev scored to make it 4-3 Lehigh Valley.

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With 10.4 seconds left, J-S Dea stripped a Phantom of the puck, found Ryan Haggerty who unleashed his lethal shot he is known for and beat Tokarski, bar down and in that made it 4-4 heading into the third period.

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Third Period: Back and forth, end to end action with neither team backing down, giving an inch to their opponent. Pens had to kill two penalties and did.

Overtime: No scoring, but the Phantoms found themselves shorthanded twice. Wilkes-Barre was unable to capitalize.

Shootout: Dea and Corban Knight missed in round one, Sprong and Oskar Lindblom missed in round two, Chris Conner missed in the top of the third and then Christian Thomas won it here…

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Three Stars: Ryan Haggerty (two goals, +2) 2) Chris Conner (goal, two assists, +2) and 1) Garrett Wilson (three assists, +1)

A note on Wilson from Nick Hart:

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Around the Division: Another exciting game happened tonight between the Hershey Bears and the Rochester Americans with tons of goals and lots of lead changes. Rochester wins in a shootout, 7-6….Springfield picks up a win over Hartford 5-3….Bridgeport beats Providence 1-0 thanks to a 27 save shutout by Chris Gibson….Charlotte pounds Belleville in Ontario 6-1.

Standings: Penguins (.778 percentage points) — Lehigh Valley (.727) — Charlotte (.700) — Providence (.667) — Bridgeport (.444) — Hartford (.409) — Hershey (.400) — Springfield (.227)

Wheeling Update: Reid Gardiner was named ECHL Rookie of the Month on Wednesday. Tonight against Cincinnati Gardiner had a goal and an assist but it was not enough for the Nailers who lost 4-3 in overtime to the Cyclones.

Pens are off Saturday, back in action Sunday against the Hershey Bears at 3:05. Gameday setup is yours Sunday at 11 a.m.

Let’s Go Pens!

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5                                          2

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When you are a loaded team, fringe players who are good players that don’t get a chance to play have to make the most of their opportunities.

Enter Ryan Haggerty.

The Penguins forward has not had a chance to play in a regular season game to date and really made the most of his opportunity tonight in Bridgeport, scoring two goals and taking home first star honors.

The scary thing about this abundance of wealth at the forward position is that Haggerty’s arrival came at the expense of Gage Quinney who was a healthy scratch tonight. They play different positions but they are all the same to me. The Penguins are loaded right now and have won their fifth straight game and first road game as they take down a very good Bridgeport team by a score of 5-2.

Tristan Jarry opposed Kristers Gudlevskis.

Lines were:

Dominik Simon – Adam Johnson – Christian Thomas
Garrett Wilson – J-S Dea – Daniel Sprong
Zach Aston-Reese – Jarrett Burton – Ryan Haggerty
Tom Sestito – Teddy Blueger – Thomas Di Pauli

Andrey Pedan – Lukas Bengtsson
Kevin Spinozzi – Kevin Czuczman
Chris Summers – Ethan Prow

Tristan Jarry – Colin Stevens

Lineup Notes: Nick Hart, flying solo tonight on radio, mentioned that Tom Kostopoulos went to the coaching staff last night and mentioned that he didn’t feel right. He took morning skate today but the coaching staff left him out of the lineup tonight. Head Coach Clark Donatelli told media this week that he wanted to get Ryan Haggerty a game this weekend, so this weekend was it. Gage Quinney was out and Jarrett Burton slotted back into the lineup. Kevin Spinozzi took the place of Dylan Zink on defense, Jarry started his second straight.

First Period: Ryan Bourque broke up a Daniel Sprong pass and he made a nice outlet pass to Steve Bernier who scored on a breakaway on Jarry for a 1-0 Bridgeport lead early on, just 1:19 into the game.

Ryan Haggerty was flying in the game. He drew a penalty when he wheeled around a Bridgeport D-man and then had a breakaway attempt but didn’t convert on either.

Alan Quine, down on a conditioning stint from the New York Islanders, collected a puck that Chris Summers whiffed on at his own blue line, missed on a penalty shot when Tristan Jarry made the save.

Tom Sestito put the Penguins on the board after this nice second effort pass by Thomas Di Pauli that set it all up…

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Second Period: Just like the first period, rtes Sound Tigers wasted little time to score to give themselves a lead. Ben Holmstrom’s shot from the corner of the ice somehow finds its way past Jarry to give Bridgeport a 2-1 lead.

Adam Johnson responded on a power play for his first goal as a Penguin and the game was tied again…

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Ryan Haggerty was flying, and again beat a Bridgeport D-man and this time scored to give the Penguins their first lead of the night…

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A Daniel Sprong-esque release there by Haggerty.

Third Period: Teams traded power plays to open the period, then the period sped by. Then, Christian Thomas waited out Gudlevskis and scored to make it 4-2…

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Time and space is a hockey players best friend.

So down 4-2 with time dwindling and Gudlevskis pulled, Ryan Haggerty scored on a backhander for his second goal of the night.

Three Stars: 3) Christian Thomas (goal, assist, +1) 2) Adam Johnson (goal, assist, +1) and 1) Ryan Haggerty (two goals, +3)

Around the Division: Hartford takes down Lehigh Valley and beats the Phantoms in Allentown 5-4. Both teams scored three goals in the third period…Hershey picks up a statement win against the Providence Bruins, beating them 3-2…Charlotte beats Utica 5-1 and Binghamton beats Springfield 2-1.

Standings: Charlotte, Providence and Wilkes-Barre all have 12 points and are deadlocked for tops in the division. Lehigh Valley has 15 points but are fourth due to percentage over games played (the have 10, the top three only have 8 games played) – Hartford 9, Bridgeport 6, Hershey 5 and Springfield 3. I promise I will get to percentages in November starting November 3 against Lehigh Valley.

Wheeling Update: The Nailers were off. They rematch in Brampton against the Beast Sunday.

Depending on if the Sound Tigers or Penguins put forth a video package, I will run them here.

Power Rankings will debut win the blog Monday at 4. Casey DeSmith should get the start Sunday in Winnipeg against the Jets. If you have the ability to watch, do so.

Let’s Go Pens!

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2                                          3

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The Hershey Bears were 1-4-1 coming into tonight’s game against the Wilkes-Barre / Scranton Penguins. They just came off of a Midwestern road trip where they beat the Grand Rapids Griffins for their only win of the season, then got smoked by the Milwaukee Admirals and shutout by the Rockford IceHogs.

Tonight, they didn’t play like a 1-4 team.

If I was writing this game as a Bears fan, I would point back to the six minute stretch in the first period of a scoreless game where Hershey was unable to score on three consecutive power plays. I’d feel good about the Bears battling back to make it 2-2 and upset at the fact that the Penguins scored on a power play of their own and optimistic about the minute or so of relentless pressure that the Bears put on the Penguins at the end of the game with the goaltender pulled.

Moral of the story if you are a Bears fan is that you won’t be down for long. You never are.

The Penguins can be happy about this gritty, gutty 3-2 win against rival Hershey. Wilkes-Barre sits 5-2 to start the season and after some shaky starts, look to be on track to continue to improve on the young season.

Tristan Jarry opposed Adam Carlson.

Lines were….

Dominik Simon – Adam Johnson – Christian Thomas
Garrett Wilson – Gage Quinney – Daniel Sprong
Zach Aston-Reese — J-S Dea — Tom Kostopoulos|
Tom Sestito – Teddy Blueger – Thomas Di Pauli

Andrey Pedan – Lukas Bengtsson
Kevin Czuczman – Ethan Prow
Chris Summers – Dylan Zink

Tristan Jarry – Colin Stevens

Lineup Notes: Obie’s tweet will do well to summarize…

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First Period: Pens killed an Ethan Prow delay of game at 5:54, a Tom Sestito hook at 7:58 and then a Tom Kostopoulos high stick at 10:00. Three consecutive penalties that the Bears could not cash on.

Then the Penguins scored when J-S Dea scored on this play where Christian Thomas set the screen on Carlson on a delayed call for the Penguins…

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Nice play by Summers to keep the puck in, don’t know what the Bears were doing just letting Dea skate in unabated and better play by Thomas getting in Carlson’s sightline for Dea to pick his corner like that.

Second Period: Penguins give the Bears only two power plays to start the second and kill them. Then the Penguins get a power play on this monstrosity of a call by referees Schlenker and South…

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Perhaps they saw that Johansen was still moving his feet as the play went dead, but neither one of them must be good at physics because Johansen was losing his balance and needed to get his feet from under him. Penguins didn’t score on the power play that ensued, but it was a terrible call at the time to give the Penguins, despite the fact that every call to this point was going against the home team.

All for naught, Teddy Blueger made it 2-0 Penguins on this pretty play and keep in of his own even strength….

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Jeremy Langlois pounced on a puck to score to cut the Penguin lead to one. This was a shorthanded goal.

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I called it a bad outlet pass from Lukas Bengtsson, Nick Hart on color through Twitter called it a puck that ricocheted off of a linesman right to Langlois. I’m going to give the benefit of teh call to Hart, who is paid to watch the game and has a better sight line than I 10 rows below him, obscured through glass and the visitors bench.

Big moment in the game was when Wayne Simpson was called for a hook and Chris Bourque said something questionable or objectionable to referee Schlenker and received a 10-minute misconduct. Hershey was without it’s biggest sniper for half of the…

Third Period: Riley Barber scored to tie the game after this nice cross ice pass from Lucas Johansen…

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Penguins finally connect on the power play when Kevin Czuczman half cocked on a shot that he must have thought was going to go off bodies. Dominik Simon had the puck fall right to his feet and scored on the wide open net to give the Penguins the 3-2 lead…

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Bears followed with immense pressure, forcing Jarry into many ten bell saves and with Carlson pulled for the extra man were never able to find the equalizer.

Three Stars: 3) J-S Dea (goal, +1) 2) Tristan Jarry (30 saves on 32 shots) and 1) Dominik Simon (goal, assist, +3)

Video Highlights: 

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Around the Division: Lehigh Valley continues to win, beating Springfield 5-2…Providence continues theirs, beating Binghamton on the Southern Tier 4-1…Bridgeport beats Hartford with Alan Quine down on conditioning from the New York Islanders and Josh Ho-Sang on straight up assignment 5-1. Penguins are in Bridgeport tomorrow. Charlotte was off. They host Utica for a pair  starting Saturday.

Standings: I will do the percentages and make everything correct in November. Consider me on summer still. Providence 12 (percentage) — Lehigh Valley 15 — Charlotte and Wilkes-Barre 10 each, Hartford 7, Bridgeport 6, Hershey and Springfield with 3.

Wheeling Update: After being up 6-2 against Brampton, a train leaves the station going 75 mph while a train 30 miles closer to it’s destination leaves the station doing 50 mph. I forget the rest and was bad at word problems in school so the Nailers hang on to win 6-5. Beast scored three in the third to make it a game. Kenny Ryan had two goals and an assist for the Nailers for first star honors. Sean Maguire picked up the win, stopping 39 of 44. Will King served as his backup, so no need for a goalie for the Nailers with Stevens on AHL recall.

This situation will need to be watched closely going forward. It is not ideal for Maguire to backup in Wilkes-Barre, but his trajectory is AHL and eventually NHL (as is any players) but leaving Wheeling with a tandem of Stevens and King may not bode well, but in situations like these you always default to who has the NHL contract. That’s Maguire. We’ll see. Too early to speculate on anything yet.

Pens are on the road Saturday for what’s likely to be a big test against a loaded Bridgeport lineup. Gameday setup hits the blog at 3.

If Coal Street puts up video highlights, I will work in a late night edit or try to get to it in the morning.

Let’s Go Pens!