Chirps from Center Ice

A fan blog about the AHL's Wilkes-Barre / Scranton Penguins

Filet of Sole on the Menu

It’s been a while since I have done an AHL Roundup blog post so it’s high time I get one out. More on the title of this blog post in a minute.

The AHL announced it’s 2011 Hall of Fame Class today. Two players, a pioneer and a coach. One of the players has ties to and in Hershey. These men will be enshrined during the All-Star festivities in Chocolatetown in January.

More on the AHL, President David Andrews was honored last night with the Lester Patrick Award. Nice video here.

Beat writers are my heroes. The league has them all listed over on their Twitter page here. You’ll notice I don’t follow the list and the reason for that is because I follow every single person on that list individually.

I am going to pitch an idea to the league on Twitter to create a “fan” list, with the main focus truly being on amassing a list of fans, which represent at least each team once. It’d be nice to see what other fans in other cities such as Rockford, Grand Rapids, Chicago and Norfolk have to think about their team and league in general.

The Pittsburgh Penguins announced today what their Winter Classic jerseys, err, sweaters will look like. I personally like them. I know there is a good majority of fans and media who do not. To each his own.

To no ones surprise, Rochester Americans beat writer Kevin Oklobzijia reported today that the Florida Panthers have notified the Amerks they will not be renewing their affiliation agreement past this year. I find this interesting because all the other teams have dance partners and Rochester is one of the AHL’s most tenured teams. This means they need a new parent and Florida needs a new place to put their prospects meaning either a new team in a new city or an existing team in an existing AHL city currently affiliated with a different team. I don’t see the AHL going back to 29 teams, but I can’t say for 100% certain that this just won’t happen. We’ll see, I suppose.

Onto the etiology of this blog title. I mentioned yesterday that if Brett Sterling played in any of the weekend games I would eat my shoe. Well, I better stay hungry because Bombulie reported that he practiced today and might play Saturday in Hershey. I guess the only thing left is to decide if I want fries with my shoe I will be eating. Maybe even, shoestring?

Phantoms tomorrow. In the meantime, I am going to work on my jokes.

Writers Block…

Not really. There’s just nothing to blog about that you don’t already know about.

Tangradi and Hutchinson are in town and were at practice Wednesday. The Ticket did not skate. I’ll eat my shoe if he plays this weekend.

That’s about it. Bombulie has lines from practice today. If you are too lazy to click the link I’ll do the work for you:

Tangradi-Jeffrey-Wallace

Conner-Craig-Johnson

Veilleux-Collins-Vitale

Walker-Sill-Boulerice

Defense pairs look something like this:

Hutchinson-Sneep

Wagner-Potter

Strait-Bortuzzo

If in fact you have team leading scorer Joe Vitale on a third line, and Brian Strait and Robert Bortuzzo as your third defensive pairing, that is depth with a capital D. Inject the Ticket into that and get your popcorn ready.

Unless something earth-shattering happens Thursday, check me out Friday circa 4:30 for the Gameday post for the 7:30 gave v. the Adirondack Phantoms.

Scooped!

Extremely slow news day for WBS. Their twitter feed has been silent for a good part of the day. Since I don’t Facebook, I can’t speak to that at all.

So I was going to run with news out of Hershey today that Braden Holtby and Brain Fahey have been called up to Washington and more shocking news that Sheldon Souray broke his hand in a fight this past weekend and expected to miss 2 to 4 weeks. Until…..

Jonathan Bombulie blogged about the very same thing.

JB also touched on Rochester Americans Michael Nylander’s season ending surgery and even a gem I was going to write about, Noah Welch’s promotion from the Chicago Wolves to parent Atlanta Thrashers.

So I have been scooped, if you want to call it that!

Bombulie also reported that Eric Tangradi and Andrew Hutchinson have yet to arrive in Wilkes-Barre (at least for practice this morning) and Brett Sterling did not skate today. I asked Brett yesterday if this were playoffs would he play and without hesitation he told me yes. So, whatever it is, it’s minor, the team wanting to make 1000% sure he’s good to go.

It is not looking good for me making visits in either Glens Falls on Friday or Hershey on Saturday. Making hotel reservations and the desire to drive to those places just isn’t there right now. It can change at a moments notice, but as of right now it looks like I will be tuning in for this weekends games on AHL Live.

Say Cheese!

Booster Club “Meet the Players” mixer was Monday evening.

Always a good time that 1) Our booster club does this and 2) The team agrees to it.

Your humble blog author was on hand for a meal, conversation and photographs. It’s the only time all year I bother a player for a picture.

Rather than chewing up time posting each one, you can find all of them over here. All of the players are there. If you go back far enough, you’ll find older pictures of me and mascots, random center ices and other stuff.

Enjoy!

Well that didn’t take long!

On the heels of the news contained one post down, Wilkes-Barre announced today that Nick Petersen has been assigned to the Wheeling Nailers and Drew Fata has been released from his PTO.

Vaya con Dios gentlemen.

Mercenaries from the West

That sound you heard outside your door today up in the general direction of Coal Street in Wilkes-Barre today was the Wilkes-Barre / Scranton Penguins loading up after the announcement from parent Pittsburgh that Forward Eric Tangradi and Defensemen Andrew Hutchinson were re-assigned here this morning.

Hutchinson is not subject to re-entry waivers, and the best explanation as to why was explained by WBS Beat Writer Jonathan Bombuilie last week on his blog:

I did some digging and I’m pretty sure Hutchinson is not subject to re-entry waivers at any point this season because he qualifies as what the CBA calls a “Veteran Minor League Player.” If a player has at least 320 career high-level pro games (Hutchinson has 490) and he hasn’t played in 40 NHL games last season (he played none) or 80 NHL games in the last two seasons (he played 40), he is a Veteran Minor League Player and is not subject to re-entry waivers.

Tangradi doesn’t need to clear because he’s on a two-way contract. There is more to it but for simplicity’s sake, that’s the best explanation.

What does it do to the lines? Glad you asked. I’m no coach, but based off of what I have seen here’s my best guess:

Sterling-Jeffrey-Tangradi
Conner-Craig-Johnson
Walker-Vitale-Veilleux
Boulerice-Lerg-Wallace
Ex: Schnell, Sill, Collins

Hutchinson-Wagner
Strait-Bortuzzo
Mormina-Potter
ex., Petersen, Sneep, Fata

Thiessen-Curry

These lines are on the assumption that Sterling is OK to play Friday in Glens Falls. It does Nick Petersen, Carl Sneep and Ryan Schnell no good to sit in the stands when they can easily be shipped to The Nail. So you keep Zach Sill as the extra forward, maybe Sneep as the extra D and release Drew Fata.

The thing is that it’s good problem to have if you are Head Coach John Hynes because you have a plethora of options at forward. Maybe on the fourth line you center Collins with Wallace and Sill / Boulerice and sit Lerg. Again I am no expert when it comes to these things, so feel free to disagree in the comment section. That’s why it’s there.

No Sens No! Pens defeat Binghamton 2-1 (SO)

If you think Binghamton is going to be a pushover this year, think again. This was one of the tightest regular season games I have seen in a while. If this is the way the next seven contests are going to be, hold on.

A 2-1 shootout win tonight. Would have been a 1-0 shutout but for Corey Locke’s shot with 10.6 left in regulation with Barry Brust pulled. I thought John Curry had it in his glove and stood to applaud, but then when the red light went on and Chris Brown pointed down I went from pure jubilation to pure ohmygodwhatjusthappened mode.

I like the way we battled tonight. Should be interesting what Bombulie has to say about tonight’s game. Great teams find ways to win no matter what, good teams find ways not to lose and lose to great teams. It may be too soon to call WBS a great team, but we survive another weekend unblemished in the loss column, 6-0-0-0 in 1st place and 12 points in 6 possible games.

As mentioned earlier, John Curry vs. Barry Brust tonight. Ryan Craig, Joe Vitale and Steve Wagner had the A’s.

Basically a back and forth, back and forth game for two periods. We basically sleep walked the first period but yet somehow outshot Bingo 12-9.

Joe Vitale is quickly becoming my favorite player just because he works his tail off shift after shift. Had his stick in the Binghamton passing lanes all night long. I can only imagine what our record would be if we did not have Vitale.

Saw our first fight of the year. Keven Veilleux and David Dziurzynski. Dziurzynski, you will recall, boarded Alex Grant in the first rookie tournament game up in London, Ontario and sent Grant to the injured list with a  broken wrist. The other fight was Francis Lessard and Jesse Boulerice but it wasn’t even a fight, they grabbed each other and went down, that was it.

This was the most chippiest game of the year, even with two Hershey contests in the bag. Bingo is on the rise folks.

Penalty kill was flawless again. 24 of the last 25 have been killed.

Steve Wagner had the lone WBS goal, pinching deep and receiving a cross ice Chris Conner pass and burying it.

Overtime saw both teams trade penalties. Nothing doing.

The shootout went 8 rounds, with Chris Conner stickhandling around a diving Brust poke check to seal the deal.

Bryan Lerg signed after the game and you can find a photo of him and me here.

No Sunday or Wednesday game this week for Wilkes-Barre. Back in action in Glens Falls Friday night. I’ll probably be back here Monday night after the Booster Club meet and greet. Get me on Twitter for the latest.