WEEKEND UPDATE

   VERSUS     (Saturday)    VERSUS      (Sunday)

With Bruce Springsteen headed to the XL Center in April, the Hartford Wolf Pack this weekend did their own version of his controversial song, “41 Shots” as that was all they were able to muster the entire weekend. Fortunately sixteen, which tied a team record for lowest output in a game, were enough to beat the Springfield Falcons 3–2 on Saturday night against a team who’s number they’ve had all season. The Pack could only put up twenty-five against the team that’s had their number all season long as they dropped an important game to the Lowell Devils 5-3 on Sunday afternoon.

What can you say about P.A. Parenteau? How he was not given an AHL All-Star appearance is just a travesty. For that matter the fact that his name is not seriously being bandied about as an NHL player is equally mind-boggling. The Hull, Quebec native has played in all 51 of the Pack’s games this season and has only managed to tally 22 goals, 36 assists for 58 points. He’s scored in 14 of the last 15 notching 7 goals and helping out on 17 others over that span. In games when Parenteau doesn’t score the team is 6-7-1-2. With the 58 points and the team’s total of 145 on the season, that means Parenteau has had his hand in 40 percent of all of the team’s tallies on the year. Parenteau is on the ice in all situations, is the team’s primary power play specialist and works hard all over the ice. Over this past weekend, of the Pack’s six goals, he had a hand in three of them. His 58 points ties him for second overall in the AHL scoring race with former Pack forward Alexandre Giroux. Giroux has done it in ten less games, but Giroux has also seen time in the NHL, playing 11 games for the Washington Capitals. Given the New York Ranges inability to put the puck in the net, why has Parenteau not been given at least an opportunity to try in the NHL?

What is there to say about how great Artem Anisimov has been playing. Howlings declared him the Wolf Pack’s first half MVP and he’s shown no signs of slowing down. He had a key power play goal in the Pack win Saturday night taking a Parenteau pass and burying it past Springfield netminder Devan Dubnyk and assisted on two of the Pack’s goals on Sunday. He did have a nine minute, American Idol-esque appearance with the Rangers, but the 20 year old is destined for great things in New York. He’s currently sitting in fourth place in the scoring race with 54 points (22g, 32a).

As everyone knows however, all the talk this weekend has been about one, Sean Avery. If all goes according to plan, Avery will clear waivers by 11am on Monday and almost immediately will be assigned to the Pack. Virtually every hockey, sports and especially Rangers related website has had something to say about Avery’s coming to Hartford. In fact about the only place where he wasn’t mentioned was in the announcement of the next cast for Dancing with the Stars. Care to lay a friendly wager that when his career is done, if the show is still around that he ends up there too? If all this goes down as expected, it’s probably a safe bet that he won’t skate in Wednesday' night’s game against Manitoba, but it’s better than a 50-50 chance he’ll be wearing number 16 come Friday night at home against Lake Erie. This works out nicely for Pack ticket sales office as five of the next six and six of nine are at home. Think there will be some media coverage of those games? How about the first one?

The special teams won the game for the Pack on Sunday night scoring two shorthanded goals and a power play goal. The two shorties ties the team record that’s been done 15 other times in team history. Then Sunday the Pack did it again for the fourth time in five games lighting the lamp while down a player. Sunday it was Greg Moore off a two-on-one from Patrick Rissmiller. Saturday, it was Vladimir Denisov and Brodie Dupont, who’s shortie turned out to be the game winner. The Pack have nine shorthanded tallies on the season tying them with five other teams (WB/ Scranton, Manchester, Philadelphia, Iowa, and Worcester). They trail Chicago who has ten and Hamilton and Peoria who both have eleven.

Here for the stats lovers are the GAME SUMMARY and OFFICIAL SCORERS SHEET from the Springfield contest and for the Lowell stats are that game’s GAME SUMMARY and OFFICIAL SCORERS SHEET.

For the Hartford perspective, Bob Crawford has both the Springfield and Lowell summaries at Hartfordwolfpack.com.  For the local Springfield coverage, Garry Brown has it at Masslive.com and for Lowell, their coverage is only on their website at Lowelldevils.com.

Meanwhile, down in Charlotte, the Checkers were challenged by Derek Wilkerson and his staff to put together a full sixty minute performance after dropping three consecutive games. They got the response they wanted when Charlotte defeated the ECHL’s best team, the Florida Everblades by a score of 4-3.

To our faithful readers, we apologize for not having individual recaps of the games this weekend. While a house full of sick children, an enormously  lengthy computer repair and a variety of other person issues ate up our entire weekend. We’re not one's to make up excuses and we will be back to normal coverage with this week’s Wednesday night game. Thanks for your patience.

SCOREBOARD WATCHING:

Tuesday, Portland takes their game in hand battle that they hold against both the Pack and Providence with a home game against Albany.

Wednesday, Lowell, who have two games in hand and trail the Pack by just five points are at home against the always tough Philadelphia Phantoms. Springfield travels to sixth place Manchester. Providence and Portland are off. The Pack will take on Manitoba at the XL Center at 7pm.

Friday the Pack should have Sean Avery in the house against Lake Erie, Worcester travels to Portland, Providence is at home for Al Montoya and the San Antonio Rampage, an
d Manitoba visits Manchester.