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POWER PLAY STRUGGLES, BUT ENOUGH TO LEAD TO WIN

  

The Penguins entered Wednesday night’s contest against the Hartford Wolf Pack with the best power play in the American Hockey League, scoring once in every 3.6 chances.

Their success rate took a hit against the Wolf Pack, but still managed to find the net twice in 12 attempts, as Wilkes-Barre/Scranton posted a 4-0 win at the Hartford Civic Center. The win raised the Pens’ record to 10-2-0-0 on the season, while Hartford fell to 3-8-1-0.

The game was ravaged by penalties, with Wilkes-Barre being whistled for 12 infractions and the Wolf Pack picking up 15.

“It’s kind of hard to get the flow and get everybody into [that kind of game],” said goaltender Andrew Penner, who picked up his second shutout by stopping 31 shots on Wednesday. “But some games are going to be like that, when the ref’s calling everything strict.”

And usually those kind of games would be easy pickings for the Penguins, who had already scored 20 power play goals in 72 attempts entering Wednesday’s game. But the first game of this five-game road trip proved to be a challenge for several reasons, according to head coach Todd Richards.



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“We scored two [power play goals], but I didn’t think our power play was sharp,” he said. “We weren’t as sharp as we needed to be, they were good and the ice was bad. So that’s not a good combination for a power play. But our penalty kill was excellent, Penner was great. I thought our defense did a great job tonight.”

While the power play might not have had its best night, the penalty killers were phenomenal, stopping nine chances to move the Pens into third place overall in the league.

“Half our team plays the power play and half our team plays the penalty kill,” said Erik Christensen, who potted both of the Pens’ goals on the man advantage, giving him six power play tallies on the season. “It’s sort of like everyone has a specialty and we’ve got a lot of guys that can do the job.”

Christensen picked up the game-winning goal for the second straight contest when he took a feed from Marc-Antoine Pouliot in the slot and rifled a shot past goalie Al Montoya 14 minutes into the game. The goal came on the Pens’ fourth power play of the period.

“They were a good penalty killing team, they put pressure on us,” Christensen said of the Wolf Pack, who entered the game with the third best penalty kill rate in the league. “It was frustrating, because we didn’t work quite as hard as we’d like to on the power play.”

Penner made several big saves to keep the Penguins in the lead during a scoreless second period, a period in which the biggest cheers from the crowd of 2,400 came when Dennis Bonvie accidentally ran over the referee.

But the visitors opened things up in the third. Christensen picked up a Jonathan Filewich rebound, then fired through traffic to beat a screened Montoya for his ninth goal of the young season at 1:25. Tom Gilbert followed three minutes later, picking up his first professional goal off a Rob Schremp feed.

Daniel Carcillo closed out the scoring with a goal at the 18:15 mark, extending his own point streak to five games (2+4=6).

“You can’t take anybody lightly,” Penner said of the win against one of the league’s current basement dwellers. “They had a pretty good stretch there, 2-1-0-1 I think, and it looked like they were going to turn things around.

“But if we want to be one of the top teams in the league or the top team, then we can’t take anybody lightly. We have to take it to every team.”

NOTES: Christensen has points in five straight games (6+4=10), and now holds down third place in the AHL scoring race. He’s also tied for fourth in the league with nine goals, and tied for first with three game-winning goals…Penner lowered his goals against average to 2.24 with the shutout, good for sixth in the league. His six wins are tied for first, and he is the only goaltender to post two shutouts thus far this season…