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I thought about this headline on the drive home tonight. A lifeless effort by the Wilkes-Barre / Scranton Penguins tonight and a 5-2 pasting from the rival Bears.

Part of me thought it was too harsh. After all, Hershey came into tonight’s game on a nine game point streak. The Bears are no pushover.

The other half of me, and I think that’s where this one is going, stuck with the headline because of the star power that the Penguins brought with them tonight. 13 forwards and 7 defensemen skated today in Florida for the Pittsburgh Penguins, who have no injuries to report and thus, no need for a recall to from the farm leaving the Wilkes-Barre / Scranton Penguins as strong as they can be with the likes of Jake Guentzel, Derrick Pouliot, Kevin Porter and Oskar Sundqvist in the lineup only missing Carter Rowney to injury and Steve Oleksy to recall to Pittsburgh as that seventh defenseman.

At home, on a Friday, against your biggest rival after a week of practice and you go and get your ass kicked. That’s pretty bad, no matter how you try to paint it.

Tristan Jarry opposed Vitek Vanecek.

Lines were…

Dominik Simon – Kevin Porter – Tom Kostopoulos
Garrett Wilson – Oskar Sundqvist – Josh Archibald
Jake Guentzel – J-S Dea – Danny Kristo
Tom Sestito – Teddy Blueger – Reid Gardiner

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

Tristan Jarry – Casey DeSmith

Lineup Notes: Healthy scratches were a mile long. Tim Erixon, Stuart Percy, Patrick McGrath, Sahir Gill, Jarrett Burton, Ryan Haggerty and Barry Goers with Carter Rowney and Thomas DiPauli the injured. Home debut for Danny Kristo, season debuts for Blueger and Sestito. Obie said pregame that Percy and Erixon will cycle in defensively this weekend. You may also see Patrick McGrath tomorrow as well.

First Period: Felt like it was all Bears to open despite either team having one shot on goal in the games first 6:30. Tristan Jarry stopped Christian Thomas on a breakaway, but later the Bears scored on a three on one when Nathan Walker put one past Jarry on an easy tap in. Said this at the time…

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Chandler Stephenson doubled the Bears lead about a minute later. That goal came after a questionable icing call on the Penguins. It appeared that a Wilkes-Barre player had beat Hershey back to the line but the linesman called it anyway.

Jake Guentzel, fresh off of NHL assignment, would score on the power play to cut the Bears lead in half and made it 2-1.

Second Period: First 12 minutes absolutely flew by with end to end action. Hershey came out of the game without receiving a single penalty from the whistle of referee Andrew Thackaberry, who I thought called an outstanding game. As an aside, because there wasn’t any rough housing our stupid stick fouls, that made this game all the more frustrating to watch because the Bears straight up beat the Penguins clean.

Hershey transitioned up ice using all of I think it was three passes and Zach Sanford cashed on a nice cross ice feed by Nathan Walker and it was 3-1 Bears.

Third Period: Pens couldn’t cash on a carryover penalty from the second on fresh ice. Danny Kristo blew a tire in front of Vanecek and fell trying to get a shot off then Vanecek robbed Oskar Sundqvist in close later on. But it was a nice pass at even strength by Guentzel setting up Jean-Sebastien Dea that brought the Penguins back within one and it was 3-2. Three gals in four games for Dea.

Undeterred, old buddy Zach Sill scored a big goal in front of Jarry on another blown assignment that pretty much iced the game away and made it 4-2.

If that didn’t, a Penguins power play where they failed to gain entry into the offensive zone to register even a shot at Vanecek surely did, as the Wilkes-Barre faithful booed their power play unit off the ice as Hershey easily killed the penalty.

Hershey iced the game away on yet another quick developing odd man rush and made it 5-2 Sill fed Garrett Mitchell who scored and it was all over.

Three Stars: 3) Nathan Walker (goal, assist, +1) 2) Jake Guentzel (goal, assist, -1) 1) Zach Sanford (goal, assist +2)

Around the Division: St. John’s beats Springfield in a run and gun affair 6-5 on The Rock…Lehigh Valley beats Rochester 4-3. Those two teams rematch tomorrow…Providence is a team you need to start paying attention to, they beat Toronto at home tonight in Rhode Island by a 5-3 score. Hartford and Bridgeport were off.

Standings: Hershey (.717 percentage points) — Penguins (.705) — Lehigh Valley (.688) — Bridgeport (.682) — Providence (.587) — Springfield (.500) — Hartford (.386)

Wheeling Update: The Nailers fell in Canada to the Brampton Beast by a 4-2 score. Milos Bubela scored and so did Garrett Meurs for the Nailers. Doug Carr started and stopped 21 of 24. Have to think that Sean Maguire gets the start Sunday in the rematch in Brampton.

Pens and Bears will rematch tomorrow in Wilkes-Barre at 7:05. Expect a bevy of lineup changes and honestly a different result. Gameday setup is yours Saturday at 3.

Let’s Go Pens!

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The officiating in the American Hockey League has, in this writer’s opinion, gotten a lot better in the past five years.

How many times would you cringe in your seat when you learned that Nygel Pelletier was assigned to work the game you were watching that night? What about Harry Dumas?

You don’t see that anymore because the AHL finally got serious about who they put in charge of their on ice product. The officiating has improved and the awful referees are filtered away.

But you see, it’s still a work in process.

The officiating crew of Andrew Wilk, a referee who worked ECHL games on the West Coast and Troy Murray, who I never heard of before this season, doled out a cumulative total of 14 power plays for the St. John’s IceCaps this weekend and eight in this game alone. The AHL wants all games in 2019 to be manned by the four official process, but pairing two rookie referees together is a recipe for disaster, and that’s exactly what that was in this weekend’s games.

I don’t want to dedicate the entire lede to the horrific officiating, because this game with the IceCaps and Penguins, was very entertaining.

A 3-2 overtime loss for the Wilkes-Barre / Scranton Penguins. The Penguins battled back from 2-0 deficit to get a goal late in the second period and then tied it in the third with a relentless attack on St. John’s.

The Penguins take 3 of 4 points out of the weekend and will remain in first place in the Atlantic Division, and what will ultimately be lost in all of this is the play in goal by IceCaps goaltender Yann Danis. Danis, a backup to Charles Lindgren in St. John’s, is a former AHL Goaltender of the Year and single handedly kept his team in the game. Any other mortal goaltender sees six or seven slip by and the officials could have hit Tom Kostopoulos with a steel chair and I am not mentioning a word of that in the story because the Penguins win easy. But it didn’t work out like that.

Casey DeSmith opposed the aforementioned Yann Danis.

Lines were…

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

Stuart Percy – Chad Ruhwedel
Cameron Gaunce – Ethan Prow
David Warsofsky – Barry Goers

Casey DeSmith – Tristan Jarry

Lineup Notes: There was a discussion earlier in the week about not having Danny Kristo play in back to back games to get his wind back, but Kristo played again Sunday. Barry Goers took the spot of Tim Erixon and Sahir Gill yielded to Patrick McGrath.

First Period: Clark Donatelli said postgame on Saturday that he wanted a stronger start by his team Sunday. He didn’t get it. The IceCaps out chanced the Penguins off the hop, then scored on a Chris Terry power play goal that gave them a 1-0 lead. Terry scored a one timer from the dot, much like he did the night before.

The Penguins offense started to come alive, but they couldn’t solve Danis with 20 shots on him through 20 minutes. Pens had a lot of chances, but Danis kept them out of his nets. Ten of those shots came from defenseman and out of those ten, five came from Chad Ruhwedel.

Second Period: Penguins battled more than just the St. John’s IceCaps this period, they battled the officials. Troy Murray and Andrew Wilk called seemingly everything they could against the Penguins. Some of these infractions looked harmless…

J-S Dea crosschecking at 11:24.

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Patrick McGrath slashing at 12:23.

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My Vine identifies it as a roughing penalty. Mike O’Brien called it that and I thought I saw one of those bozos in stripes signal for roughing.

Three other things happened in the period. First, while shorthanded, Garrett Wilson nearly scored on this play…

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That’s referee Troy Murray with a look at it in real time, then he took a look at the video replay and the call on the ice of “no goal” was affirmed.

Second, while killing another penalty, Oskar Sundqvist was hooked from behind. No call by either of the referees on the ice.

Third, with four seconds left, Oskar Sundqvist scored on a rebound of a David Warsofsky shot that cut the deficit to one heading into the third period…

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Third Period: The Penguins limited the IceCaps to just five shots on goal in the period and were all over the IceCaps in the period. Finally, despite more questionable calls by the officiating crew, David Warsofsky or J-S Dea tied the game with this goal…

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Josh Archibald nearly made it a 3-2 game for the Penguins but Yann Danis made the stop with his stick. DeSmith later made a nice stop off of a Penguins turnover pun front. Despite battling five guys with sticks and four men with whistles after 60 minutes, it was off to…

Overtime: Wilkes-Barre had many chances. Kevin Porter fed Chad Ruhwedel cutting in the slot but Danis made the save, Josh Archibald fired a puck high. Pens cam win two on one, Danis made the save, and forwarded a pass up to an IceCap skater and St. John’s was off on a three on one. DeSmith made the save, then Ruhwedel turned the puck over and Chris Terry ended the madness on this snipe…

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End to end action, which is exactly what three on three overtime is supposed to be.

The Pens have recorded a point in all seven of Casey DeSmith’s starts this season.

Three Stars: 3) Chad Ruhwedel (goal, nine shots, +1) 2) Sven Andrighetto (goal, assist, even) and 1) Yann Danis (50 saves on 52 shots)

Around the Division: Hershey beats a road weary Syracuse team 4-2 at home.  Over 20,000 teddy bears were tossed on the ice after Garrett Mitchell’s first period goal…Lehigh Valley final solves the Bridgeport Sound Tigers puzzle with a 3-2 win in Connecticut….Providence beats Springfield 2-1 in overtime. The Bruins have points in their last nine games…Hartford is unable to sweep the Marlies in Toronto dropping a 5-3 contest to their Canadian foes.

Standings: Three way tie in points at the top, but the league doesn’t rank them by points anymore, they do it by percentage points. So it’s as follows: Penguins (.738 percentage points) — Lehigh Valley (.705) — Hershey (.705) — Bridgeport (.682) — Providence (.568) — Springfield (.500) — Hartford (.405)

Wheeling Update: The Nailers were off. They are back in action this Friday in Brampton, Ontario, Canada when they take on the Beast, who are the ECHL affiliate of the St. John’s IceCaps. The weekly Wheeling Wrap will recap the week that was for the Nailers Tuesday at noon.

Here are the video highlights of the game…

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The Week 8 AHL Power Rankings will hit the blog Monday at 4.

Let’s Go Pens!