Penguins get three power play goals from Eric Tangradi and Jeff Zatkoff continues to be a rock wall in net as the Wilkes-Barre / Scranton Penguins defeat the Bridgeport Sound Tigers by a score of 3-1.

I really don’t know who was more of a story in this game. You have Tangradi scoring a hat trick, the Penguins special teams unit scoring three power play goals in the game or Jeff Zatkoff who was pretty much awesome in the third period keeping the Sound Tigers out of his net. Since there is no “I” in team, you can say yes to all three.

Jeff Zatkoff vs. Kevin Poulin – Brian Strait returned from scratchdom. Brian Gibbons took warmups and was scratched again. Keven Veilleux did not take warmups and was a scratch. I am very curious to see what is up with that.

First Period: Tangradi wastes no time in getting the Penguins on the board. After getting cross checked into the boards by Bridgeport’s Travis Hamonic, Trevor Smith centered Tangradi who snuck it past Poulin to put the Pens on the board first. Penguins did not let up. It seemed that whenever a Sound Tiger touched a puck, there were three Penguins in the vicinity to take the puck off of him. Later, on a power play, Johan Sundstrom finishes off a nice passing sequence to tie it at one apiece. Even later on a power play, Beau Bennett skates out from behind the goal line and passes to Benn Ferriero who passes to Tangradi who scores his second.

Second Period: Heard someone say in my section that Simon Despres takes a lot of silly penalties. Well, they were right. He high sticks Ty Wishart and took his 21st PIM of the season, second to only Brian Strait for the WBS defense who was a healthy scratch last game. I personally don’t think Despres will ever get scratched, but it is worth noting. Regardless, the infraction was killed. Penguins really ramped up the physicality this period just mugging Bridgeport whenever they came close to a puck. On yet another power play, Brian Dumoulin wrister from the point gets deflected in past Poulin by Tangradi for the hat trick. Initially, there was confusion on who scored it, but I heard the tip and knew it was Tangradi’s hat trick.

Third Period: Bridgeport really ran over the Pens this period. Here’s where Jeff Zatkoff earned his postgame meal because it really could have been a tie game on several occasions. It essentially was a reverse of the first forty minutes for the Penguins. Thankfully for the Penguins, no Sound Tiger was able to get one past Zatkoff.

Three Stars: 3) Trevor Smith (two assists, even) 2) Benn Ferriero (two assists, even) and 1) Eric Tangradi (hat trick, even)

See I would have replaced either Ferriero or Smith with Zatkoff. He deserved a star tonight for his work in the third period alone.

Around the Division: Syracuse beats Hershey 6-1. Braden Holtby started the game, but was chased in the second after allowing four straight Crunch goals. Binghamton beat Adirondack 5-2. Norfolk loses to Springfield in Virginia 3-2

Standings: Syracuse 18 — Penguins 16 — Binghamton 14 — Norfolk 14 — Hershey 11

Wheeling Update: The Nailers were off tonight, tomorrow they play the Toledo Walleye in Toledo.

Conference: 1) SPR (20) 2) SYR (18) 3) WOR (16) 4) BRI (16) 5) WBS (16) 6) MCH (15) 7) BNG (14) 8) POR (14)

SendToNews Highlights: Have Tangradi’s first goal and Johan Sundstrom’s only goal.

Penguins travel to Hershey tomorrow for a date with the Bears at 7. Gameday for that will be here at 3 p.m.

—

I will be making the trip. Not as a fan, but as Jonathan Bombulie’s proxy. Yes, you read that right, I will be covering the game and writing a story for The Citizens Voice for Sunday’s paper. I was honored when Chris Roy from the Maine Hockey Journal asked me to write for him last Saturday. To have Jonathan Bombulie, who I consider one of the best at what he does, ask me, a yak with a blog and too much time on his hands, to write and cover for him is humbling.

Look for my tweets of the game tomorrow. I’ll be “reporting” on the game and not “cheering” on the game. Then make sure you buy a paper Sunday.

There is a lot about this Springfield Falcons team that makes you go, “wow” – some examples:

–> Top 5 in both penalty kill (4th) and power play (5th) coming into tonight.
–> Not a single player on the roster a minus in +/-.
–> Five players with 10 or more points. Comparatively, the Penguins have none.
–> Team with the fewest goals allowed (17) coming into tonight.
–> Have a goaltender in Curtis McElhinney which leads the AHL in shutouts, and  many other statistical categories.

Someone forgot to tell Beau Bennett.

Riding two goals from the rookie, the Pens hold on and defeat the Springfield Falcons 2-1 tonight dealing the Falcons just their second loss of the season in regulation. It may be too early in the season to call this a “statement game” but by all senses of the word, it was. The Penguins played a solid 60 minutes of hockey this evening and they won the game.

Jeff Zatkoff vs. Curtis McElhinney – Keven Veilleux made his debut, Brian Strait was benched scratched for this game.

First Period: By all accounts, the Penguins won this game in the first 15:40 of the period, as they did not allow the Falcons a shot on goal until then, meanwhile taking 11 or 12 of their own. It was a forechecking and puck possession clinic by the Penguins. They worked a full line change while in the Falcons offensive zone. Rookie Dominik Uher just grinded opponents, forechecking any Falcon player with the puck and driving them backwards. The Penguins did not score this period, but “worked the game backwards” it seemed by not allowing Springfield to do basically anything.

Second Period: Falcons, as you would expect, come out flying. Robert Bortuzzo takes an interference call. In the ensuing power play, Springfield registers five shots on goal. Later. Riley Holzapfel finds Beau Bennett camped out on the far dot and fires a long pass to him he deposits very quickly into the net behind McElhinney. Just a laser beam shot. More buzzing by Springfield. Penguins do not bat an eyelash. Again, Beau Bennett corrals a bouncing puck and scores his second of the night to make it 2-0.

About this period: According to the Falcons, this was the first game all year an opposing player has scored two goals in a game vs. the Falcons and Curtis McElhinney’s shutout streak ended at 166:40.

Third Period: This tweet sums up the period:

(replace “put” with out – I often misspell words when tweeting a game on my iPhone)

And this one, but with a few other players too, but this one stuck out:

–

Rinse and repeat all period. Falcons took 11 shots this frame and finally got one with 1:47 to go when Nick Holden fired a shot from just below the blueline that Tomas Kubalik deflected.

Falcons, with McElhinney pulled, never got the equalizer.

Three Stars: 3) Jeff Zatkoff (25 saves on 26 shots) 2) Riley Holzapfel (two assists, +2) and 1) Beau Bennett (two goals, +2)

Keven Veilleux looked okay in his first game back and fought Dalton Prout in the first period and earned a takedown.

The Penguins are over .500 for the first time all season.

Around the Division: They all watched us.

Standings: Syracuse 16 — Norfolk 14 — Penguins 14 — Binghamton 12 — Hershey 11

Conference: 1) SPR (18) 2) SYR (16) 3) WOR (16) 4) BRI (16) 5) MCH (15) 6) NOR (14) 7) WBS (14) 8) BNG (12)

Wheeling Update: The Nailers were off tonight.

SendtoNews Highlights: Are here. This is a new thing that I am incorporating, so the video highlights may be uploaded later.

Penguins back at it Friday when they welcome the Bridgeport Sound Tigers. Gameday for that will be up here on the blog Friday afternoon at 3 p.m.

If you noticed me on Twitter tonight you noticed a much more reserved game call. The reason for that was that Chris Roy from the Maine Hockey Journal contacted me earlier this week and asked if I would do some freelance work for him. Of course I volunteered. Chris was able to get me a press credential for the night so I sat in the WBS press box again which is why if you were at the game, you did not see me in my regular center ice seat.

There are rules up here that I must abide by. The golden rule is “no cheering.” So I went with that on the game call on Twitter and kept it level (as best I could)

I thought about writing two stories. One for Chris, one for the blog. I figured I would let you, the reader, see what I came up with for Roy and enjoy it from there.

Chris may edit this down to a humble paragraph. I won’t know till tomorrow. Without further delay, here it is. Let me know in comments what you think:

WILKES-BARRE, PA — The first ten minutes of Saturday’s game against the Wilkes-Barre / Scranton couldn’t have gone any better for the Portland Pirates.

The next ten, and ultimately the final 45 with overtime, were a much different story.

The Portland Pirates earn a point in the first meeting of the year with the Penguins, 4-3 via the shootout.

The first ten minutes of the game were tight checking, disciplined hockey. Then, three seconds after a penalty to Pirates defenseman David Rundblad expired, Penguins center Riley Holzapfel cut to the net where Paul Thompson fed him a pass off a rebound of a Joe Morrow shot. Then, 1:23 later, Trevor Smith scored the first of two goals in the period for him off a pass from Penguins rookie Beau Bennett. Smith would later go on to pick the pocket of Phil Lane trying to get the puck out of the Pirates defensive and wired a shot over the glove of Visentin.

It was a second period of fortunes for the Pirates as they took advantage of special teams with Brandon Gormley scoring his first professional goal on the power play. Chris Brown and Chris Conner worked some magic with Conner feeding Brown with Penguins defenders draped all over him.

The third period would not slow the Pirates down in the momentum department. Despite being outshot by the Penguins 13-7, they still managed to pull even off a wild sequence when Captain Alexandre Bolduc would bring the Pirates even with his team leading 7th goal of the season. Portland continued to press but got caught by the referee’s whistle as they would have to kill two penalties, but the Portland penalty killing unit would successfully do so. They would then receive two penalties, one from Penguins defenseman Dylan Reese at the end of the third but could not get the go ahead goal.

In overtime, the Pirates outshot the Penguins 8-2 and really blitzkrieged Thiessen with an array of shots but the Penguins netminder held the Pirates out of his net.

Benn Ferriero and Eric Tangradi scored in the shootout. No Pirates were able to get past Thiessen.

“First ten minutes I thought we were fine, then we gave them room to move and to skate and they started to push back.” Coach Ray Edwards said after the game. “I liked the way we fought back there in the second and responded to get a couple back and ultimately fight to get a point. Managing momentum was a big part of the game.”

Mark Visentin stopped 38 of 41 shots to fall to 1-1-1 in the season. Brad Thiessen improved to 2-1, stopping 36 of 39.

Biddeford native and Penguins defenseman Brian Dumoulin was scoreless, but managed a +2 for the evening.

Heavyweights Joel Rechlicz and Steve MacIntyre both dressed but did not square off.

The Pirates were 1 for 4 on the power play and the Penguins were 0 for 5.

The Pirates face-off against the Hershey Bears tomorrow afternoon at 5:00 p.m.

—

Not bad, huh?

Alright. Paying off the rest of the blog with the stuff you read about after the game recap:

Around the Division: St. John’s beats Hershey in Chocolatetown 2-1. Binghamton beats Norfolk 4-2. Rochester beat Syracuse in my game to watch 5-2. Seems that the Penguins and Amerks have the Crunch’s number this year.

Standings: Syracuse 16 — Norfolk 12 — Binghamton 12 — Penguins 12 — Hershey 11

Wheeling Update: Nailers get dropped by the Walleye again 5-3. Keven Veilleux registered an assist, Cody Chupp a goal, Carl Sneep an assist. Patrick Killeen stopped 22 of 27.

Penguins are off until Wednesday when they host the Springfield Falcons.