Been dogging on Philip Samuelsson a bit here and on Twitter. Tonight, with two primary assists on two Penguins goals he silenced those including myself who said that he needs to get shipped to Wheeling in a 3-2 Wilkes-Barre victory in Binghamton.

Scott Munroe vs. Robin Lehner. Binghamton didn’t dress a single veteran player because bodies are banged up. Zach Sill was out for the Pens with an upper body injury, Cody Wild, Alex Grant, Matt Rust and Ryan Schnell joined him in the press box. Niko Dimitrakos was in, Brian Gibbons as well. Lots of shuffling going on. The Walker-Lerg-McDonald line was back, too.

First Period: Philip Samuelsson point shot was saved by Lehner and the rebound came to Bryan Lerg who gave the Pens an early 1-0 lead. Then, David Dziurzynski dangled around Robert Bortuzzo and unleashed a wrist shot snipe which beat Munroe to even things at one. Later, with Derek Grant in the box and then Dziurzynski in the box for boarding on Nick Petersen, Colin McDonald would clean up the rebound to push the Pens back out in front 2-1.

At some point I tweeted that this was the first lead WBS had in quite a while. They did not lead vs. Hershey, Syracuse or Worcester. You had to go all the way back to last Saturday in Manchester when the Pens enjoyed a lead in a hockey game.

Second Period: Mike Hoffman had a breakaway but was unable to score on it. Then, Sneep was whistled for holding and the Pens in the penalty kill did not allow the B-Sens a shot on goal. Really a quick moving period with the teams going up and down the ice.

Third Period: Binghamton started out guns blazing, taking 11 shots in the period before Wilkes-Barre registered one. During, Joey Mormina covered his hand in a wild scrum in Munroe’s crease on the puck which was a penalty shot awarded to Nikita Filatov. He was unsuccessful on the penalty shot, however. Then, with Alex Picard in the box for tripping, Josh Godfrey would throw a change up at the net which either fooled Munroe or he was screened on. This evened things at 2. Late, a Samuelsson point shot again was deflected this time by Brandon DeFazio. After some rough stuff, the Pens held on and won.

Three Stars: 3) Colin McDonald (goal, assist, +1) 2) Philip Samuelsson (two assists, +2) and 1) Brandon DeFazio (game winning goal, +2)

Around the Division: Hershey lost to Lake Erie 5-4 in a wild game which saw the Bears even things at four late only to have Lake Erie storm back and win it on a wild goal mouth scrum. Norfolk edged Providence 3-2. Syracuse was idle.

Standings: 1-WBS (27) 2-NOR (25) 3-HER (23) 4-SYR (21) and 5-BNG (16)

Conference: St. John’s lost 6-3 to Toronto tonight so they are still in first with 28 points but now Wilkes-Barre sits a point behind them with 27. The rest of the conference looks like this: 3-CT (25) 4-NOR (25) 5-ADK (23) 6-HER (23) 7-BRI (23) 8-MCH (23)

Credit Binghamton for running with Wilkes-Barre tonight. When asked about the lineup tonight, here is what head coach Kurt Klinendorst told Bob Howard of the Power Play Post Show:

Our line-up vs WBS tonight, are you kidding me? We couldn’t even compare but we sure did compete. That’s a good thing.

Debate amongst yourselves if you think a team that “couldn’t compare” with the Penguins nearly won the game tonight on whether this is good or bad.

Penguins ship to Norfolk Monday. That is one trip I would love to take but am not. Updates may be scarce here on the blog till then. So if you will, take a look at the First Quarter Grades I ran on Thanksgiving, after the Syracuse game.

Let’s Go Pens!

Pens lose another shootout tonight 3-2. I’d rather lose and get points then lose and get no points. Exciting game tonight between these two heated rivals.

Brad Thiessen vs. Braden Holtby. Geoff Walker and Carl Sneep were in for Niko Dimitrakos and Cody Wild. Paul Thompson and Brian Gibbons still in the chateau le bow bow Hynes.

First Period: Teams would trade penalties to start then Robert Bortuzzo would get called for tripping. Ryan Potulny, fresh back from being injured would clean up a Julien Brouillette shot and put the Bears up 1-0. Fights would break out, with Ryan Schnell and Patrick Wellar fighting to a draw and Zach Sill playing a tune on Garrett Mitchell. Bears basically controlled the Penguins this period, limiting them to 4 shots on goal while taking 10 shots themselves.

Second Period: With Ryan Potulny in the box for a four minute high stick, Ben Street would tie the game after a nice tic tac toe play from Simon Despres and Bryan Lerg. Penguins would only allow Hershey three shots in the period while taking eleven themselves.

Third Period: Penguins could not capitalize on a 5-on-3 for :56 even with a time out. The power play all night looked discombobulated. That was probably the turning point even with a tied game to this point. Then, after an Alex Picard initial holding call, Boyd Kane would elbow a Penguin and get a five minute major for elbowing (above the head) and a ten minute misconduct and a game misconduct. In the melee, Robert Bortuzzo would also get a roughing minor. After, Ryan Potulny would net his second of the night to make it 2-1. Right after the power play for the Pens after all the rough stuff expired, Nick Petersen would score on a flying backhander to even things late. Onto overtime we’d go…

Overtime: Teams would get one shot on goal. Best was a Patrick McNeill shot Thiessen got a pad on.

Shootout: Potulny and Aucoin would score for the Bears and Bryan Lerg for the Pens and the Bears would skate away with the shootout win. Afterwards, Braden Holtby would hotdog a bit which drew the ire of Ryan Schnell who got a slashing penalty after everything settled down. Holtby received a five minute misconduct. The teams would chirp at center ice (see what I did there?) and cooler heads would prevail and the game was over.

Three Stars: 3) Ben Street (goal, assist, +1) 2) Ryan Potulny (two goals, -1) and 1) Keith Aucoin (game winning shootout goal)

Around the Division: Norfolk pumped Providence 5-1. Syracuse did the same to Binghamton 4-1.

Standings: WBS leads Hershey and Norfolk 25 points to 23 respectively. Then Syracuse has 21 points and Binghamton 16.

Conference: 1-StJ (28) 2-WBS (25) 3-CT (23) 4-HER (23) 5-NOR (23) 6-BRI (22) 7-ADK (21) 8-SYR (21)

7-1 in shootouts last year vs. 1-4 this year. Discuss amongst yourselves how, with the same goaltender, the deficit is what it is.

Onto Binghamton tomorrow. I will be there in attendance. Penguins are going to need to win and win big. Binghamton has not been kind to the Pens of late. We will see what happens.

Let’s Go Pens!

Strange game tonight. Tons to get to. Lots to dissect. Pens lost this one 7-5 tonight. Lots of different ways to go at this one.

Scott Munroe vs. Iiro Tarkki. Boatloads of lineup changes after the disappointing weekend in New England. Carl Sneep, Brian Gibbons, Geoff Walker, Alex Grant and Paul Thompson all scratched.

First Period: Before you even could say “huh” the Pens were down 3-0. Scott Munroe had not made a single save. Kyle Palmieri, Rick Schofield and J-F Jacques all scored. Thiessen relieved Munroe. Then late, Palmieri struck again on the power play to make it 4-0 Syracuse. Final shots this period was 15-7 Wilkes-Barre.

Second Period: Matt Kennedy scored even strength to make it 5-0 Syracuse. He took a nice feed from Rick Schofield and went 5-hole on Thiessen. Then next shift Alex Picard fresh from Pittsburgh made it 5-1. But, Nicolas Deschamps pushed the lead back to five and made it 6-1. This made for six Syracuse goals on ten shots. Pens would miss a bunch of open nets but this was due to last second stick lifts by Syracuse blue liners. A flurry of goals from the Penguins would close out the period with Bryan Lerg getting one on a deflection of a Jason Williams point shot. Then, Zach Sill would score on a  wraparound to make it 6-3. Syracuse would take its time out and Bryan Lerg would score again to make it 6-4 on a nice wrist shot. Pens would run out of time in the period. It looked like late that Syracuse had no answers. 15+ minutes of this period was spent in the Penguins offensive zone.

Astute Twitter follower Sean Mc tweeted that Munroe was off the hook for the loss despite not recording a save.

Third Period: The effort was there, the urgency was not. I tweeted at the end of the second that next goal would win the game. That would come off of the stick of Peter Holland with Simon Despres in the box for holding the stick when all he needed to do was pass out of his defensive zone instead of trying a fancy dangle move. Late, John Hynes would use a strategy move I liked. With 5 minutes to go in the period and Wilkes-Barre on a power play he pulled Thiessen. At that point, why not? Syracuse had only 18 shots on goal at this point. Syracuse was unable to net the empty netter and Ryan Craig would make it 7-5. Wilkes-Barre would use its timeout but get no more goals.

Three Stars: 3) Bryan Lerg (2 goals, even, 9 shots) 2) J-F Jacques (goal, assist, +1, Gordie Howe hat trick) 1) Kyle Palmieri (2 goals, assist, +1)

Around the Division: Norfolk lost 6-3 to Charlotte. Hershey edged Providence 4-3. Binghamton was idle.

Standings: Hershey the winner of the evening with the two teams ahead of them losers. 1-WBS (24) 2-HER (21) 3-NOR (21) 4-SYR (19) 5-BNG (14)

Conference: 1-StJ (27) 2-WBS (24) 3-CT (23) 4-HER (21) 5-MCH (21) 6-MCH (21) 7-SPR (20) 8-ALB (20)

It’s going to be interesting what Bombulie’s take is on this one. For what it is worth, if you allow a team 18 shots on goal all game and score five goals of your own, you will win 98% of the time in this league. Penguins put 54 shots on goal tonight. Iiro Tarkki is a hell of a goaltender to begin with. Regardless, if WBS limits a team to 18 shots and even scores three goals it still probably wins a game.

It’s the peaks and valleys of a minor league hockey season. It happens. With all the success Wilkes-Barre has had these past two seasons, this performance with these stats was due.

Penguins are at the quarter pole on the season. I will try to get the First Quarter Grades out tomorrow as I have all the stats lined up. All it takes is getting everything down on paper and in the blog. If I run it tomorrow be prepared for nonstop tweets about it all weekend, as you’ll all probably miss it eating Thanksgiving dinner.

Happy Thanksgiving everyone! Let’s Go Pens!