vs.       

  0                                       3

–

The Wilkes-Barre / Scranton Penguins woke up this morning with an opportunity to clinch their thirteenth straight berth to the Calder Cup Playoffs. They needed a win, with help.

That help never arrived because Albany beat BInghamton this afternoon, so it didn’t make a difference if the Penguins won or lost tonight, but there was still a game to be played.

The Penguins won this game 3-0 and there were a lot of things to discuss.

– 40th win for WBS, tying the AHL mark for most consecutive 40 win seasons (10)

– Eleventh shutout for Matt Murray, who leads the AHL in save percentage (.941) and goals against (1.55) this season.

– Magic number shrinks to two. Penguins can clinch Wednesday in Lehigh Valley.

The Lehigh Valley Phantoms were depleted by call-ups and suspensions and skated a man short, but hung around for large portions of this game.

Matt Murray vs. Rob Zepp

One lineup change for the Penguins tonight. Adam Payerl was out for J-S Dea. Dea centered the third line and Matia Marcantuoni bumped down to center the fourth line.

First Period: Exact copy from the night before vs. Worcester, but the Penguins actually had Grade A scoring chances and capitalized. Scott WIlson had a pair this period.

The first came with him camped out at the slot. Tom Kostopoulos wheeled around the net, passes to Andrew Ebbett who passed it right to Wilson who zipped it past Zepp for the 1-0 lead. The Penguins were outshooting the Phantoms 10-5 and had a ton of time in the Phantoms zone.

Wilson got his second when Tom Kostopoulos forced a turnover in the neutral zone, threaded a pass in between the legs of a Phantoms defender to WIlson who roofed it on Zepp to make it 2-0.

Second Period: Penguins remained in control of the game and forced the Phantoms into icings. Whenever they had a lapse in defense, Murray was there, stopping a breakaway opportunity then later a 2-on-1. Teams traded power plays with neither team finding the back of the net and both goaltenders making big saves. The depleted Phantoms were hanging around though.

Third Period: Game was falling into a lull. The Penguins were gifted three consecutive power plays to open, but did not capitalize. Later Brian Dumoulin scored to add insurance to make it 3-0. Tom Kuhnhackl wheeled around the net and tried to center to Dominik Uher. Uher either missed the puck entirely or set a rolling pick on Zepp as the puck wen through his legs and to Dumoulin who wired it home to make it 3-0.

The Penguins were buzzing again. Danny Syvret rung one off the post with Tom Kuhnhackl screening Zepp. Phantoms applied late pressure but the Penguins and Murray closed the door.

Three Stars: 3) Tom Kostopoulos (two assists, +2) 2) Scott Wilson (two goals, +2) and 1) Matt Murray (21 save shutout)

Around the Division: Binghamton lost in Albany 4-1. That loss eliminated the B-Sens from playoff contention. Hershey shuts out Norfolk 2-0. Pheonix Copley still hasn’t lost in 2015 and the Bears have 10 team shutouts. The staff here thinks that is cute, Matt Murray says hi. 🙂

Standings: Hershey 94 — Penguins 87 — Lehigh Valley 69 — Binghamton 68 — Norfolk 57

Conference: 1) MCH (99) 2) HER (94) 3) SYR (89) 4) WBS 87 5) PRO (85) 6) HFD (85) 7) WOR (84) 8) POR (81)

Wheeling Update: Nailers lost 5-2 in Kalamazoo tonight.

SendToNews Highlights: Are not up yet, but the Pens will run a YouTube package most likely and if I remember to add it in here on another edit I will sometime during Easter Sunday.

Penguins are back on the ice Wednesday in Allentown against the Phnatoms with a chance to punch their ticket officially to their thirteenth appearance in the Calder Cup Playoffs. My Week 26 AHL Power Rankings will be up at their normal time, at 4 on Monday. Happy Easter everyone!!

Let’s Go Pens!!

          vs.      

  4                                            2

–

These aren’t your uncle’s Worcester Sharks.

This Sharks team won six games in a row coming into tonight’s game and were three point behind the Wilkes-Barre / Scranton Penguins for the four seed. Worcester isn’t a pushover. They are a damn good team and this was on full display tonight as the Penguins do a lot of things right but lose 4-2.

Prior to the game, Pittsburgh announced the recall of Taylor Chorney, assigned Kasperi Kapanen from his Finland team and Wilkes-Barre recalled Clark Seymour.

In another move, this report that the Wilkes-Barre / Scranton Penguins have signed a kid by the name of Adam Krause. Krause was the captain of the Minnesota-Deluth team. That’s all I know about him. He will start his pro career in Wheeling and help the Nailers make a push towards playoffs, learn the pro game and will get here eventually.

Jeff Zatkoff vs. Aaron Dell

Lines were…

Scott Wilson – Andrew Ebbett – Tom Kostopoulos
Bryan Rust – Jayson Megna – Josh Archibald
Tom Kuhnhackl – Matia Marcantuoni – Dominik Uher
Pierre Leblond – Adam Payerl – Bobby Farnham

Scott Harrington – Brian Dumoulin
Danny Syvret – Alex Boak
Nick D’Agostino – Clark Seymour

Jeff Zatkoff – Matt Murray

Carter Rowney missed the game with what Mike O’Brien called a, “day to day upper body injury.” Add Harrison Ruopp to that list also with the same malady. J-S Dea was the extra that took warmups but was scratched.

Quick blurb on Rowney, I would add that the has been the best player on the ice for the Penguins on a most consistent basis for Wilkes-Barre for the better part of a month and a half.

First Period: Penguins did everything right in this period but score. Lots of offensive zone time, a power play opportunity, but it was the Sharks that scored in the final minute after Nikolay Goldobin scored his first pro goal after swooping around the net and beating Zatkoff to the post.

Second Period: The question coming into this period was how the Penguins would respond to start after dominating the period but getting scored on in the final minute. The answer was no issue. The Penguins would go on a power play and Danny Syvret would score through bodies to even the score at one.

But Worcester would edge ahead after a faceoff win in the offensive zone that saw Willie Coetzee squeak a shot past Zatkoff and in for a 2-1 lead.

Teams would trade 4×4 opportunities to close out the period leading to the….

Third Period: Bad defensive zone coverage by the Penguins and the Ryan Campbell scored to make it 3-1. John Hynes called his time out. I would call it out of frustration, as the Penguins were doing a lot of things right but still trailed 3-1.

It didn’t matter. The Sharks would score on a power play with Daniil Tarasov scored to make it 4-1.

Dell wouldn’t fully cover a puck and Dominik Uher would swoop in from no where to make it 4-2, but the Penguins would not get any closer. It was the first goal scored on the Sharks even strength in 178:50 of play between the two teams. This math provided by The Great Daryl Hunt of Sharks Page.

Penguins ran out of time to mount anything that resembled a comeback and that was that.

Three Stars: 3) Tom Kuhnhackl (two assists, -1) 2) Nickolay Golobin (goal, assist, even) and 1) Daniil Tarasov (goal, assist, even)

Around the Division: Binghamton beat Lehigh Valley 4-3. Hershey lost to Norfolk in Virginia 4-0.

Standings: Hershey 92 — Penguins 85 — Lehigh Valley 69 — Binghamton 68 — Norfolk 57

Conference: MCH (98) 2) HER (92) 3) SYR (89) 4) WBS (85) 5) WOR (84) 6) HFD (83) 7) PRO (83) 8) POR (81)

Wheeling Update: The Nailers, needing a win, lose to last place Evansville by a score of 6-1. Zack Torquato had the only goal for Wheeling in the loss.

SendToNews Highlights: Not up yet. You never like to see losing highlights anyway.

Phantoms in town for a 7:05 start against the Penguins. Gameday for that will be up at 3 p.m.

Let’s Go Pens!

          vs.          

3                                              4

–

At the end of the day, a win is a win.

If you stuck around and watched the final seven minutes of this 4-3 win by the Wilkes-Barre / Scranton Penguins, you saw the Hartford Wolf Pack get two desperation goals to make it a game, but a game with under a minute to go.

Two big third period goals by Dominik Uher were enough insurance for the Penguins to hold on and win, separate themselves from the fifth place Wolf Pack and shrink the magic number to clinch playoffs down to 5 points. Realistically, the Penguins can punch their ticket to their thirteenth straight playoff appearance this weekend.

Jeff Zatkoff vs. Mackenzie Skapski

Personnel News: J-S Dea was sent to Wheeling in the afternoon….Matt Murray won AHL Goaltender of the Month for the second consecutive month, the first AHL Goaltender to do so since Phillippe Sauve for Hershey in 2002…Taylor Chorney was a late scratch for the Penguins tonight, presumably recalled to the Pittsburgh Penguins, who played a defenseman short again tonight.

First Period: Alex Boak misplayed a puck in his own zone, was dispossessed by the Hartford forecheck and Oscar Lindberg scored to make it 1-0 Wolf Pack 4:00 in. The Penguins were flat to start and did not register a single shot on goal until 6:44 left in the period. Jeff Zatkoff kept the Penguins in the game during the period. Final shots on goal was 13-4 Hartford after the first period.

Second Period: Period started with the Penguins on a carryover power play from the first period. Here’s how bad that went. The Penguins were whistled for a deliberate offside which brought the faceoff in their own end. Hartford easily killed it and hit a post seconds after.

Finally, the Penguins got to the cycle. Hartford was on their heels. It felt like the Penguins were building momentum and that if they slipped and allowed to let the Wolf Pack to score to make the score 2-0, that it would be game over.

It didn’t happen. Tom Kuhnhackl found Brian Dumoulin at the far wall, who saw a streaking Jayson Megna cutting down the slot. Dumoulin shot the puck at Megna’s stick and Megna was able to deflect home the puck for a tie game. Next level a) shot pass by Dumoulin and b) defection by Megna to manufacture a goal in that sequence.

More forechecking by the Penguins. Hartford was forced to ice. Dylan McIlrath roughed Tom Kostopoulos. Penguins power play. Then Chris Bourque goes for slashing. Full Penguin five-on-three for 63 seconds. Penguins time out.

Turning point. Get one here and it’s an entirely different ballgame from here in.

Pass. Pass. Pass. Pass. Oh man, they aren’t going to score here. Pass. Pass. GOAL! Scott Wilson put it on net and Tom Kostopoulos, parked right in front, deflected it in for a 2-1 Penguin lead.

The fact that the Penguins came out flatter than a pancake in the first period was long forgotten.

The Wolf Pack would get 1:32 of their own five-on-three but not score on it. You could argue, and I would let you, that this was the turning point of the game.

How did the Wolf Pack get a two-man advantage you ask? Scott Wilson was sent off for a holding infraction. During the kill Carter Rowney tried to bat down a pass to him at his own blue line but missed. He chased the puck down to Skapski but had to stop abruptly and sprayed Skapski with snow. Referee David Banfield didn’t like this and assessed an unsportsmanlike conduct penalty on Rowney. A horrible call. Look, you have two playoff teams battling one another in an overall clean game which is closely and hotly contested. Let the players decide the outcome, dammit.

Hartford wouldn’t score on the power plays, so it went all for naught.

Third Period: :10 in, Dominik Uher whipped a one timer past Skapski for a 3-1 Penguins lead. Later, Brian Dumoulin would slap pass again to Uher who deflected it past Skapski for a 4-1 Wilkes-Barre lead.

Proof that the Penguins are a well coached team. Not just this article that appeared on the AHL site this week, but the Penguins just found another gear and zoomed past the Wolf Pack and were running circles around them.

But hold on. Hartford coach Ken Gernander is no slouch himself and the Wolf Pack are, after all, a playoff team. They started a push back. Zatkoff had to save two redirects. He didn’t save the third. Chris Bourque (who else) scored it and it was game on again.

With Skapski vacated, Mat Bodie boomed in a slap shot from the blue line that made it 4-3 with just 24.9 seconds left. But the Penguins won the faceoff and the Wolf Pack didn’t gain entry into the offensive zone again and the Penguins would hold on.

Three Stars: 3) Tom Kostopoulos (goal, -1) 2) Brian Dumoulin (three assist, +1) and 1) Dominik Uher (two goals, +1)

Around the Division: The Hershey Bears lost in a shootout to the Worcester Sharks 3-2. The Sharks are in town Friday and have won six straight, battling for their playoff lives as well. Lehigh Valley was in Norfolk and won 3-2. Binghamton was in Syracuse and won in overtime 3-2.

Standings: Hershey 92 — Penguins 85 — Lehigh Valley 69 — Binghamton 66 — Norfolk 55

Conference: 1) MCH (96) 2) HER (92) 3) SYR (89) 4) WBS (85) 5) WOR (82) 6) HFD (81) 7) PRO (81) 8) POR (80)

Wow. Worcester is fifth in the conference with a game in hand on the Penguins, Wolf Pack and Bruins.

Wheeling Update: The Nailers were in Elmira tonight and lost 4-1.

SendToNews Highlaights: Are not up yet. You may be on your own to get them because I am traveling tomorrow and may not be able to edit them in. The Penguins will probably have them up on YouTube at some point.

Worcester is in Friday. If you are wondering where I am traveling to, it’s to my brothers in New Jersey which means that I won’t be at the games Friday or Saturday vs Lehigh Valley. I don’t like missing home games, but family first. Anyone that has one will understand.

I do plan on watching the games from afar and will have full service here on the blog and every place else you know me for.

Let’s Go Pens!!!