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J-S Dea was a healthy scratch in Friday’s game in Bridgeport against the Sound Tigers. It was the first time in a while that Dea had been a scratch. The usually reliable Dea is a staple in every Wilkes-Barre / Scranton Penguins game. But not last night.

Normally coaches do this to send a message to a player that isn’t performing.

J-S Dea got the message, loud and clear.

The Wilkes-Barre / Scranton Penguins, one of the stingiest defensive teams in the AHL, finally get their first shutout of the season and end the Bridgeport Sound Tigers four game win streak with a 1-0 win. Tristan Jarry started the game and stopped all 24 shots faced.

A frustrating game from the Penguins perspective through two periods. They were doing everything right, getting power plays and such but were not able to solve starting goaltender Stephon Williams at all and the power play was not clicking, up to an 0-for-28 stretch.

Williams came into the night with an 0-2 record against the Penguins with a .809 SV% and a 5.47 GAA. Just awful numbers against a team not known to fill up the net on a night by night basis. He nearly won the game for his team, but it was the Penguins, using tried and true system of defense, coupled with strong play in net by Jarry that was the decider in this game.

Lines were…

Dominik Simon – Kevin Porter – Tom Kostopoulos
Thomas Di Pauli – J-S Dea – Reid Gardiner
Garrett Wilson – Oskar Sundqvist – Josh Archibald
Patrick McGrath – Jarrett Burton – Ryan Haggerty

Derrick Pouliot – Chad Ruhwedel
David Warsofsky – Barry Goers
Cameron Gaunce – Ethan Prow

Tristan Jarry – Casey DeSmith

Lineup Notes: Carter Rowney took warmups but was a surprise scratch. He is day to day with an upper body injury as told to the WBS media by Clark Donatelli postgame. Dea and Haggerty were in for Danny Kristo and what was to be Patrick McGrath. Kristo, highly touted in the trade for Reid McNeill, was a heathy scratch in just his third game as Penguin. Barry Goers was in for Lukas Bengtsson on the blue line. Derrick Pouliot was in for his final game of his conditioning stint. He is expected to be recalled back to Pittsburgh either Sunday or Monday.

First Period: About as even as you could get for the Penguins and Sound Tigers. Just eight shots a piece. The Penguins hit a post on a power play but that was all for excitement from the Penguins perspective.

Second Period: Williams was dialing in. The Penguins couldn’t get anything past him. They were getting a lot of shots and limiting Bridgeport to just one about half way through the period. Pens would continue to have power plays handed to them but were not able to cash. Story to this point was the Penguins inability to crack on the power play, Williams’ stellar play in net and the Penguins defense with Jarry bending but not breaking against a Bridgeport attack that, if you give them a lead, they are hard to beat.

Third Period: Williams continued his stellar play, robbing Dominik Simon with the glove early on. The Penguins were getting another power play though, and this time they cashed when J-S Dea knocked in a puck legally with his stick under the bar on Williams in a big pileup. Williams then delivered a cross body block on Dea, which caused a melee.

Dea’s goal, originally credited to Kostopoulos, came with :01 left on the power play.

Seth with tweet of the night….

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Later, Dea got his pound of flesh when he can opened Williams who came out to play a puck. He flipped the Bridgeport net minder on his can, then had to fight Kyle Burroughs. Burroughs received an instigating penalty to go along with a misconduct and a fighting major. Dea only got five for fighting and two for goaltending interference. This is important because Dea’s fight does not count against the, “10 fights gets you suspended” rule.

Not to say that Dea will ever get suspended for fighting ten times in the AHL, but we strive to educate and inform here at Chirps from Center Ice.

Pens had to kill a Chad Ruhwedel trip with about six minutes left to play, did, then weren’t able to score on an empty Bridgeport net but it mattered little.

Three Stars: 3) J-S Dea (goal, even) 2) Tom Kostopoulos (assist, even) 1) Tristan Jarry (24 save shutout)

Tom Kostopoulos was announced as the goal scorer at the time of the goal announcement, it wasn’t until after the game that they flipped it to Dea, so I wonder if you can flip three stars. My guess is no.

Around the Division: Providence loses to St,. John’s 4-3 in a shootout. The Bruins came back from three goals down to force extra time….Hershey sweeps Springfield 4-3. The Big Bear Machine is warming up….Hartford beats Lehigh Valley 3-1.

Standings: Penguins (.737 percentage points) — Lehigh Valley (.694) — Hershey (.684) — Bridgeport (.667) — Providence (.526) — Springfield (.500) — Hartford (.395)

Wheeling Update: Greenville beats the Nailers 3-2 in overtime. The two teams rematch tomorrow.

Neat little tidbit from Nick Hart…

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Video highlights…

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The Week 7 AHL Power Rankings hit the blog at 4 p.m. Monday and the weekly Wheeling Wrap will be here Tuesday at noon. Anything newsworthy will be sprinkled in during the week.

Let’s Go Pens!

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The Wilkes-Barre / Scranton Penguins are drawing opponents on the up and up right now.

The Hershey Bears are the defending Eastern Conference Champs and whitewashed the Pens 4-0 on Wednesday, this after coughing up a two goal lead to these very Penguins in the third period last Saturday.

The Bridgeport Sound Tigers are a pesky team that, the last time these two teams met, would not go away seemingly and came into the contest Friday night winners of three straight.

Make it four.

A 3-2 overtime win for the Sound Tigers tonight where all three goals were scored on two on one rushes. The Penguins could not solve goaltender Eamon McAdam all night it seemed but manufacture a point anyway. Good teams do this.

The Pens had come into tonight’s game against Bridgeport 4-0 and outscoring their opponents by a 16-6 score coming off of a loss the prior game. The winner in net for every single one of them? Casey DeSmith. DeSmith started tonight for the Penguins and took the overtime loss.

Lines were…

Dominik Simon – Carter Rowney – Tom Kostopoulos
Garrett Wilson – Oskar Sundqvist – Josh Archibald
Thomas DiPauli – Kevin Porter – Danny Kristo
Patrick McGrath – Jarrett Burton – Reid Gardiner

Derrick Pouliot – Chad Ruhwedel
David Warsofsky – Tim Erixon
Cameron Gaunce – Ethan Prow

Lineup Notes: Oskar Sundqvist and Domink Simon returned from injury. Simon missed about a week, Sundqvist missed just one game…J-S Dea was a healthy scratch. Lukas Bengtsson was scheduled to start the game but was a late scratch in favor of Tim Erixon. Others were Sahir Gill, Ryan Haggerty and Barry Goers. Stuart Percy is still listed as an injury scratch.

First Period: Steve Bernier’s goal at exactly one minute of the first period was all the scoring in the period. It was a quick two on one that Bernier had and took the shot that beat DeSmith just one minute into the period.

Pens ended up 2-for-2 on the penalty kill for the first period. Bridgeport’s first power play was bad, registering just one shot on goal and their second one was better, registering four. Wilkes-Barre had one power play and couldn’t get anything past goaltender McAdam.

Second Period: Penguins did everything right this period. They started the period coming out strong with pucks at McAdam, got an early power play, then Jarrett Burton scored his first of the season off of a perfect pass by Dominik Simon…

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Fourth line came though for the Penguins. Great shot by Burton.

Penguins looked like they were going to turn the tide in their favor. Immediately after that goal by the Penguins, the Sound Tigers took a penalty. Wilkes-Barre did everything but score. Goaltender McAdam lost a stick, as did another Bridgeport player. They forced the Sound Tigers into an icing after the power play expired.

So what happened after that?

Bridgeport scores to go ahead 2-1. Tanner Fritz setup Ross Johnson on a two on one to reestablish the lead for the Sound Tigers.

A team that the Penguins couldn’t put away the last time these two teams met had not trailed this game going into the…

Third Period: Penguins are in a 0-for-24 slump on the power play. Gotta think that one or two of them would have helped them in this game. They could not score one the only penalty awarded by the officials in the period.

Eamon McAdam continued to make saves he had no business making, three shots quick in on him in close that he turned away.

Josh Archibald scored from a low angle that finally beat McAdam to put the Penguins even with the Sound Tigers at 2-2. Wilkes-Barre managed to manufacture a point out of essentially nothing, as McAdam wasn’t giving them anything.

Overtime: Connor Jones scored the third two on one goal for the Sound Tigers in overtime. Danny Kristo inadvertently took out Casey DeSmith in the areas allowing Jones to score the game winner. After a brief review by referees Geno Binda and Terry Koharski, the goal stood.

Here is the goal. Sorry for not cutting up every goal tonight. My brother was in and wanted to watch the game with me streamed to the TV vs. me in a corner with a cat on the computer…

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Three Stars: 3) Devon Toews (two assists, +2) 2) Josh Archibald (goal, +1) and 1) Connor Jones (game winning goal, +1)

Around the Division: Providence gets over .500 for the first time in a while and beats St. John’s up in Newfoundland by a score of 2-1…Hershey beats Springfield 5-2 in Massachusetts. These two teams rematch tomorrow night in Hershey…Lehigh Valley puts away Binghamton 4-3. The Senators had come back each time on the Phantoms but weren’t able able to put Lehigh Valley away…Albany beats Hartford 4-3 in overtime.

Standings: Lehigh Valley (.735 percentage points) — Penguins (.722) — Bridgeport (.706) — Hershey (.667) — Springfield (.529) — Providence (.528) — Hartford (.361)

Wheeling Update: Wheeling was off. They play Greenville for a pair starting Saturday.

Teams will bus overnight to Wilkes-Barre and rematch at Mohegan Sun Arena at 7:05. Gameday setup for that will be up at 3.

Let’s Go Pens!

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The unreasonable Penguins fan will be mad with this result.

That’s because the unreasonable Penguins fan expects their team to win 85-0 every game.

Don’t be an unreasonable Penguins fan.

Here’s what I wrote in my Gameday setup this afternoon…

Bears cannot be happy with the way Saturday went. Expect a relentless attack from Hershey tonight. Pens can’t be thinking about the turkey dinner yet or they’ll get embarrassed tonight.

Final result was a 4-0 Penguins loss. I wouldn’t call it an embarrassing loss, but whenever you get shutout of a game or lose by multiple goals, it’s not the first topic of conversation.

It’s also unreasonable to expect the Penguins to sweep the Bears all 12 games in this season series. The Bears are a good team and well coached. They were legitimately embarrassed by coughing up a two goal lead in the third period last Saturday against this very Penguins team. To think that this did not stick with Hershey and wasn’t a focus point in practice this week is unreasonable.

I mean if you disagree, this is an open forum and the comment section is always available. If no one comments I assume I am correct in my analysis, but I am not mad at this loss at all.

Now, if the trend continues and the Pens are swept by Bridgeport, themselves a very dangerous team, then the unreasonable fan may be onto something…

Tristan Jarry opposed Vitek Vanecek.

Lines were…

Tom Kostopoulos – Carter Rowney – Danny Kristo
Sahir Gill – Kevin Porter – Ryan Haggerty
Garrett Wilson – J-S Dea – Josh Archibald
Thomas DiPauli – Jarrett Burton – Reid Gardiner

Derrick Pouliot – Chad Ruhwedel
David Warsofsky – Lukas Bengtsson
Cameron Gaunce – Ethan Prow

Tristan Jarry – Casey DeSmith

Lineup Notes: Derrick Pouliot is down for his conditioning stint, playing his first game for Wilkes-Barre since January 16 at Syracuse. Oskar Sundqvist was a surprise injury scratch. Obie said on radio that he picked up a minor lower body injury in practice Tuesday. It isn’t expected to be long term. With Jake Guentzel currently on recall to Pittsburgh, Danny Kristo took his spot on the first line, making his debut in a Penguins sweater.

First Period: Better start by the Penguins to start in contrast to Saturday. Wilkes-Barre had six shots on the board before the Bears registered their first. Both goalies made saves on breakaways. Vanecek on Josh Archibald and then later Jarry on Ryan Bourque when the Penguins were on a power play.

Second Period: Game was settling into a defensive battle, with just five shots by the teams nineteen minutes into the second period. Then, with 20.5 seconds left, Zach Sill scored his first goal of the season on this shot that broke the 0-0 deadlock…

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Bears had started to setup and control the offensive zone time before breaking though on the goal by Sill.

Third Period: Pens weren’t going to win this game tonight after Josh Archibald was stopped for the second time on the breakaway by Vanecek. Hershey comes right back down the other way and scores this goal that made it 2-0 for the Bears…

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Referee Evgenii Romasko appeared to be out of position slightly to not be able to initially blow the play dead on the initial stop by Jarry. I guess in hindsight he was in perfect position because he allowed play to continue and Christian Thomas to score the goal. After an officials review, the goal stood.

That goal wasn’t the reason why the Penguins lost this game. Something seemed off here by Wilkes-Barre. They seemed to be chasing the game since around the half way point and the score line showed.

Christian Djoos scored to make it 3-0…

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Djoos’ first goal since Game 5 of the Eastern Conference Finals against the Toronto Marlies in last years Calder Cup Playoffs.

Pens had a late power play but just were not able to set anything that looked close to a chance up.

After the easy Bears kill, Paul Carey put the cherry on top of the sundae, or to use a more date-appropriate term, the gravy on top of the stuffing…

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Three Stars: Vitek Vanecek (24 save shutout) 2) Christian Thomas (goal, even) and 1) Zach Sill (game winning goal, +1)

Observations: Derrick Pouliot had a good game, drawing three tripping penalties. Noticed Danny Kristo a lot in the first half of the game, but not so much in the second half. Shots ended up 24-18 favoring the Penguins.

Around the Division: Bridgeport beat Hartford 4-2. One of their goals was scored in this manner…

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Not only is Hartford a bad team (in last place in the Atlantic) but there have ZERO puck luck.

Other finals included a Lehigh Valley 1-0 win in Binghamton in a game that was similar to the Pens / Bears game somewhat in a defensive battle. Rookie Alex Lyon picked up his first AHL shutout with 28 saves….Providence beat Rochester 6-4. The Amerks have lost four in a row.

Standings: Penguins (.735 percentage points) — Lehigh Valley (.719) — Bridgeport (.688) — Hershey (.647) — Springfield (.563) — Providence (.500) — Hartford (.353)

Wheeling Update: The Nailers are off until Saturday when they host Greenville.

Video highlights…if you want to call them that if you are a Penguins fan…

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Pens travel to Bridgeport for the first of a home and home Friday. Gameday setup hits the blog Friday at 3.

Let’s Go Pens!