The agitation was evident in head coach Todd Richards’
voice following Wednesday night’s 5-3 loss to
the Syracuse Crunch at Wachovia Arena. After all,
his club had the second-highest point total in the
league entering the game, which saw one of the league’s
lowest ranked squad’s paying a visit.
But a pair of first period tallies gave the Crunch
an early lead, and the visitors from the North Division
never trailed in the game.
“Not focused, not ready to play. I said it
yesterday, I said it this morning, you’ve got
to be ready to go,” Richards stated. “The
first 20 minutes, we weren’t there. We couldn’t
execute plays, couldn’t do things. That’s
just lack of focus and lack of preparation.
“It’s their job to be prepared to play
the game. We give them systems to play, tell them
how to expect Syracuse to play, and they have to go
out and execute. We didn’t execute as a group
today.”
A pair of early penalties to Alain Nasreddine and
Kyle Brodziak allowed Syracuse to fire their first
salvo, and Mark Hartigan made sure it counted. Hartigan
drove the slot then one-timed a Joakim Lindstrom feed
over Andrew Penner’s blocker, giving the Crunch
a 1-0 lead during the five-on-three advantage.
Syracuse upped that lead to 2-0 before the end of
the period, as Joe Motzko, the club’s leading
scorer, intercepted a Wade Skolney pass and wrested
a shot past Penner at 13:58 for the only two goals
of the opening frame.
Kurtis McLean, recently recalled from Wheeling, made
his first appearance in Wilkes-Barre this season a
successful one, as he shoveled home a Micki DuPont
shot with four seconds remaining on a Pens power play
midway through the game.
Daniel Carcillo got the Penguins back on even footing
three minutes later, taking a Stephen Dixon pass at
the blue line and pushing it on goal. Tomas Popperle
went down to make the save, but his momentum carried
himself and the puck over the goal line to make it
2-2.
But Syracuse would regain the lead less than two
minutes later as Ben Simon found the back of the net
from an odd angle. Adam Pineault extended the lead
to two goals with a third period power play tally,
but Tom Gilbert countered 47 seconds later to pull
the Pens within one.
That was as close as they would get though, as late
penalties to Carcillo and Jean-Francois Jacques put
the home club at a disadvantage for much of the closing
five minutes.
