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In lieu of the traditional recap, let’s look at the good, the bad and the ugly from tonight’s game, shall we?

The Good: Penguins only allow the Admirals 12 shots on goal the entire game and drew seven straight penalties over the span of the game. Chances were there, pretty much all game.

The Bad: 0-for-8 on the power play. 32 shots, no goals.

The Ugly: Russian goaltender Igor Bobkov played a stellar game, and the Penguins lose 1-0. The Pens now have scored just one goal in their last two games.

The above summarizes this otherwise boring game. It’s really hard to come up with words when the team gets shutout but looks good in the process while getting shutout, if that makes any sense.

The Admirals fourth line did it again. Pierre-Luc Letourneau-Leblond throws a puck on net that Penguins goaltender Jeff Zatkoff doesn’t corral and Brayden Irwin stuffs it home in the scrum to put the Admirals out ahead 1-0 early in the third. It would prove to be all the run support Bobkov and the Admirals would need.

Personnel wise for the Penguins Chris Collins made his debut. Cody Wild took warmups but was scratched. Joey Mormina did not but he was healthy. The rest were injury scratches.

Alex Grant was clipped late in the third by Mat Clark and did not return. For his effort, Clark fought Adam Payerl.

That’s all I can make sense of tonight. Penguins take to the road in Binghamton tomorrow.

Three Stars: 3) Pierre-Luc Letourneau-Leblond (assist, +1) 2) Brayden Irwin (goal, +1) 1) Igor Bobkov (32 save shutout)

Around the Division: Syracuse dropkicks Binghamton 7-1 on the Southern Tier tonight. Robin Lehner took the loss. The B-Sens lost David Dziurzynski, Derek Grant and Eric Gryba to Ottawa earlier today. The Crunch are now off until Sunday, when they play the Penguins at 4 p.m. here in Wilkes-Barre. The Bears let a 2-1 lead slip on them and lost 3-2 in the Canadian version of the Steel City, Hamilton Ontario tonight in a shootout. The Bears have points in their last seven games and are, well, read on….

Standings: Binghamton 63 — Syracuse 62 — Penguins 53 — Hershey 53 — Norfolk 45

Conference: 1) SPR (65) 2) BNG (63) 3) PRO (59) 4) SYR (62) 5) POR (58) 6) WBS (53) 7) HER (53) 8) CT (52)

Wheeling Update: The Nailers lose 6-5 in Gwinnett, SC tonight. The Gladiators score three unanswered goals in the third period to stun the Nailers. Keven Veilleux was without a point and registered a -1.

SendToNews Highlights: Are here. Not much to look at from both a Wilkes-Barre and Norfolk perspective.

Gameday for tomorrows venture in Binghamton will be up here on the blog at 3 p.m.

Let’s Go Pens!`

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Woof.

 That’s the best way to describe this 5-1 dismantling at the hands of the Binghamton Senators tonight.

You can blame the officiating. David Banfield and Trent Knorr let things get out of hand and whenever that occurs, bad things happen.

You can blame the Penguins defense, because before the madness with the officiating began, two defensive gaffes occurred and one of them ended up in the back of the Penguins net. Things rapidly went down hill from there.

The B-Sens have the Penguins number this season. The Penguins are 1-6 vs. Binghamton this season. Bingo had lost six of their last nine coming into tonight.

Penguins were put in a 2-0 hole to start and at the end of twenty minutes were without Adam Payerl, dismissed after being assessed a five minute major for charging B-Sens starting goaltender Nathan Lawson and Tom Kostopoulos, who was assessed a five minute major for spearing. The rule book says that whenever there is an injury on a charge the player who charged is given a game misconduct. Whenever you intentionally spear someone, that’s a game misconduct too.

Lawson left the game with injury and was replaced by the ever steady Robin Lehner.

Second period the Penguins were on a power play and Binghamton scored its 13th shorthanded goal of the season, which is tops in the AHL. Then, whatever traction the Penguins had gained or hope to gain was squashed when Pat Cannone scored and then Jack Downing from the slot to make it 5-0 Binghamton. At this point, the rout was on.

Nothing really mattered in the third period. Dominik Uher scored his first AHL goal of his career to make it 5-1. Then to rub salt in the wound, Riley Holzapfel appears to score to make it 5-2, but referee Trent Knorr immediately signals no goal because Alex Grant was in Lehner’s crease. Holzapfel, livid, gets thrown out of the game for arguing the call.

That was pretty much it after that. Crumble this one up and come back Friday vs. Norfolk.

No one else played in the division. Penguins are ten back of Binghamton, five back of Syracuse, one ahead of Hershey and ten ahead of Norfolk. Binghamton has 63 points. Do the math from there.

Penguins remain in sixth in the conference. They are four points behind Providence for the five seed and five back of Syracuse for the four. Hershey is one back of the Penguins, who have, if you haven’t figured it out already 53 points.

Saturday’s game on the Southern Tier should be interesting, no?

Wheeling didn’t play and I’m not going to bother to link in to the SendToNews Highlights. If you want to look, you can do so on your own.

Penguins probably have off tomorrow, then practice Thursday for their three in three weekend against divisional foes. I’ll see what I can run content wise for the blog and go from there.

Let’s Go Pens!