GO WITH A SMILE… 

      VERSUS     

In the original Batman movie starring Jack Nicholson and Michael Keaton, the Joker says at one point in the script, “…As my plastic surgeon always said, ‘when you got to go, go with a SMILE.” A crowd of 7,275 left the XL Center Saturday night with a smile as the Hartford Wolf Pack scored a team record seven goals in the second period and held on to win their final home game of the 2009 – 2010 season 7-5 over their i-91 rivals, the Springfield Falcons.

Despite winning on the road Friday night over the Worcester Sharks 3-2, Bridgeport’s 6-3 victory over Lowell eliminated the NY Rangers top farm team from playoff contention for the first time in the team’s 13 year history. Hartford easily could have come in and, pardon the pun, “Packed it in” and slept their way through this one. They didn’t as a victory assured them of at least a winning season.

“If anything you want to play for (.500) right now,” team captain Dane Byers said. ”We’re not playing to make the playoffs, but you have to find things to play for and you play for the front of the jersey and being over .500 you go home and think of things we can correct for next year.”

For Wolf Pack head coach Ken Gernander, this is the first time in his professional career he won’t be involved in a post season race for a championship either as a player, assistant or head coach and was clearly visible on the Minnesota native’s face. “Well obviously I’m (feeling) a bunch of different emotions, most of them, probably all of them not positive. You know, you deal with it.”  He said. “(We) try and prepare just as any other games and be professional about it.”

“Up until (Saturday night) we were playing for a playoff spot. Tonight it’s a little bit different circumstances. The guys had a good game (Friday) night and came out on top. You finish the game and find out that Bridgeport had won so…”

For the Wolf Pack, slow starts in the first period have been the team’s Achilles’ Heel. The Pack managed just three shots on goal for the entire period and didn’t get their first until there was only 8:03 left to go. In other words, they came out against a weaker opponent completely flat.

When Byers took a Cross-checking call at 10:20 and Chris Minard made them pay just 27 seconds later with his first of two on the night you couldn’t help but think it was going to be a long night for the home team.

It was clear that the team’ strategy was to target 5’8” Cory Locke and he was being hit all over the ice. When 6’3” Ryan Donald finish a clean but hard hit on Locke along the half-boards, Byers had seen enough and immediately jumped the Falcons defenseman and essentially knocked him into the next period with a series of hard punches that dropped him at 12:55.

Springfield went to the dressing room for the first intermission up a goal and a 6-3 edge in shots.

In the locker room, Gernander addressed his troops about the physical side of the game. “If you quit playing physically and quit working, and stuff like that, it makes the other team better or braver or what have you, and then they start to take liberties on guys,” Gernander said. “They were kind of targeting (Locke), and if you’re not giving your best effort, like I said, it allows the other team to feed off of that. And whether it’s you that gets taken advantage of or a teammate that get’s taken advantage of, the only way to stop that is to play your game and to really compete.”

That message certainly got through as the team came out in the second period and looked like they could topple any team in professional hockey. The Wolf Pack bested their previous all time high of five goals in a period which they’d done thirteen times in their history. Ironically, the last time they accomplished that was against these same Springfield Falcons on March 29th, 2008. This time however, the team exploded for seven goals on a season high 23 shots on Falcons starter Bryan Pitton (19 saves, 2-6-0).

The offensive barrage started just 47 seconds into the period when Andres Ambϋhl’s shot from the left side hit Pitton and came all the way out to the right point. Corey Potter unloaded a hard wrist shot that also hit Pitton and this time bounced off the Falcon netminder to the left side of the crease where Kris Newbury was there to put it away for the equalizer.

Fifteen seconds later the Pack tallied again when Paul Crowder’s shot from the right circle hit Pitton and found it’s way to Brodie Dupont on the left side of the crease. Dupont slid the puck off Pitton as well. The puck was loose on the right side of the crease where Locke backhanded it into the back of the cage for his first of two on the night.

After the play, ex-Pack defenseman cross-checked Locke to the back of the head sending the Toronto native to the ice. A melee broke out as a result which ended up leaving Taylor in the penalty box for eight minutes and Crowder and Dupont in their for four each. That gave the Pack a four minute power play.

At 3:46 Byers tallied his career high 24th of the season when he cleaned up in front of the net and put the puck past Pitton.

2:37 later Byers and Newbury would finish perhaps their nicest passing play of the season which freed up Chris McKelvie for his second in as many games. “We had the give-and-go,” Byers said. “They weren’t even flat passes. We had to knock them down to give them back to each other and (Newbury) was able to find McKelvie back door. It was a great pass.”

The Pack would tally again just 2:09 later when Ambϋhl would get his first of two on a great rush up left wing and got past Johan Motin and slid his shot under Pitton.

Thirty seconds after the goal, and just after Taylor was released from his holding cell, it was time for the physical defenseman to answer for the shots he’d been laying on Locke.

Jared Nightingale, who has stood in the way for his teammates all season long, challenged Taylor and they went at it. “I think if it wasn’t me then somebody else would have done it.” Nightingale said. “I think it’s important to have that team toughness. If you fight, you fight for the right reasons and obviously he took one of our better players out and I think he knew he’d have to answer the bell with somebody.” Nightingale connected with a hard right hand to the jaw that dropped the 6’4” Taylor.

Taylor, who was a fan favorite when he skated for the Wolf Pack, was jeered and booed every time he touched the puck and was the target of a lot of hard hits the rest of the night.

Chad Johnson (28 saves, 23-18-2) was beaten on a good shot by Colin McDonald after he picked off a clearing attempt at 2:12 left in the second frame.

Right after the goal was scored, Donald Brashear skated over to Taylor and challenged him. Taylor wisely would have nothing to do with it but did take a decent punch anyway from Brashear which sent the NHL veteran to the penalty box.

48 seconds later Ryan Garlock sent a perfect pass from the right corner out to Ambϋhl in the slot. The Swedish Olympian had his first multi-goal game of his AHL career beating Pitton over the glove with 1:24 to go in the period.

Put Hartford had one more left in them as they tallied again with just six seconds left off a three-on-one odd man rush with Nigel Williams, Locke and Dupont. After some impressive passing that drew the defense to his side, Dupont found Locke on the right side all alone and Locke put a fake on Pitton that got him to flinch and the Pack’s top goal scorer set his personal career best with his 31st of the season.

Gernander summed up his team’s most productive period ever saying, “Hockey is a hard, demanding game when you’re 100 percent committed and locked in mentally. If, for whatever reason, you let your guard down or you’re emotionally not where you need to be, it’s an almost impossible game. But when the juices got going, we were a much better team.”

“After the first period, we obviously weren’t happy with our play,” Byers said. “We had a very good second period, and it’s human nature to let up a little bit with a little breathing room. But it’s still the AHL, and you can’t give anyone any breathing room.”

The letting up made an otherwise one sided game much closer than it needed to be as the Pack gave up a power play goal and the second of the game to Minard at 4:29, then a delayed penalty goal to Colton Fretter and the games final tally to Matt Beca at 12:23.

“We’re obviously disappointed not making the playoffs because that’s every team’s goal and we came up short,” Byers said. “It’s too bad because we’re playing our best hockey of the season right now. But we had a bad month of February, and it came back to haunt us.”

“Nobody in the room is happy about going home and not going to the playoffs. I know everybody in here is disappointed, but we’ve had some good spurts during the season, and we’ve played well at times and we just haven’t done it enough.”

Byers then summed up the irony of the 2009 – 2010 Wolf Pack campaign so accurately. “It’s very frustrating. I think the coaching staff would agree that we’re probably playing our best hockey right now and I think if we made the playoffs I think we could have made some noise. But that’ not the way that it is right now. We’ve just got to play good in this last game. You’re only as good as your last shift.”

Sunday afternoon the Pack travel to Bridgeport to face the Sound Tigers for the final game of this season hopeful that their last shift will be one of congratulations and not condolence.

Bruce Berlet pulled double duty Saturday night. He takes on the Hartford perspective at Hartfordwolfpack.com and then crossed the hallway to get the story from Springfield. Read that story at MassLive.com.

GAME SUMMARY and OFFICIAL SCORERS SHEET

NOTES:

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* After the game, the Wolf Pack gave out their team awards. Brodie Dupont was honored with the Mary Lynn Gorman Community Service Award. The team gave Andres Ambϋhl the Bob Girouard Character Award and Dupont also received the Unsung Hero Award. The night’s two biggest awards were both presented in absentia as the recipient of the Fan Favorite and the team voted MVP Award were both given to Dale Weise who is on recall in New York with the Rangers. Weise told Howlings that both are incredible honors. “I want to thank the fans for voting me their favorite player,” He said. “It means a lot to me and it’s a great honor. I take a lot of pride in the time I spend off ice with the fans. I know they want us to all go out and play hard and compete and lay it out on the line for them and I tried to do that every single shift. It really means a lot to me.”

When discussing the team voted MVP, Weise said he was really humbled by that honor. “I really want to thank my teammates for that award. That’s amazing. What I would most like to do is thank P.A. Parenteau for not being there for fifty games so that there was a chance that someone other than him was going to win it. These are just incredible honors. I’m really happy right now.”

* After Sunday’s finale with the Sound Tigers, both Julien Brouillette and Nightingale will head straight to Charlotte to join the Checkers in their pursuit of the team’s first Kelly Cup. The Checkers can close out their first round opponent, the Toledo Walleye in Game Four Sunday afternoon at the Time Warner Cable Arena. “(GM and Head Coach Derek Wilkinson) is going to have some tough decisions. They have a pretty deep team. They’re also playing really well and I don’t want to come in and mess with any chemistry, but whatever Wilkie needs I can help and give it my all down there.”

LINES:

Byers © – Newbury – Ambϋhl
Dupont – Crowder – Locke
Soryal – Garlock – Grachev
Brashear – McKelvie

Williams – Potter
Heikkinen – Baldwin
Brouillette – Nightingale
Dowzak

Johnson
Talbot

(Assistant Captains Bold and Italicized)

SCRATCHES:

P.A. Parenteau – Recall NY Rangers
Dale Weise – Recall NY Rangers
Anders Eriksson – Recall NY Rangers
Matt Zaba – Healthy Scratch
Derek Couture – Upper Body injury – Season over
Devin DiDiomete – Lower Body injury – Season over
Bobby Sanguinetti – Lower Body injury – Season over
Steven Valiquette – Hand Injury – Season over
Michael Sauer – Shoulder – Season over
Mike Hoffman – Shoulder – Season over
Brent Henley – Knee – Season over

THREE STARS:

1. HFD – C. Locke
2. HFD – A. Ambuhl
3. SPR – C. Minard

ON-ICE OFFICIALS:

Referee:
Tim Mayer (43)

Linesmen:
Kevin Redding (16)
David Spannaus (8)

NEXT GAME:

Last game of the season Sunday afternoon in Bridgeport. Bob Crawford is on the air at 2:30 with the pre-game, the puck drops at 3pm.

To watch the game live, you can purchased it for $6.99 at AHL-live.

Season Tickets can be purchased for the 2010 – 2011 season. For Ticket information call (860) 548-2000.

Too far away or can’t make it? Listen live at WTIC.com or from your cell phone or computer visit www.twitter.com/howlingstoday for complete live in-game coverage.

SCORE-SHEET:

Springfield Falcons 5 At Hartford Wolf Pack 7 – Status: Final

Apr 10, 2010 – XL Center Veterans Memorial Coliseum

Springfield 1 1 3 – 5

Hartford 0 7 0 – 7

1st Period-1, Springfield, Minard 20 (Del Grosso, Petry), 10:47 (pp). Penalties-Crowder Hfd (holding), 5:05; Byers Hfd (cross-checking), 10:20; Donald Spr (fighting), 12:55; Byers Hfd (fighting), 12:55; Heikkinen Hfd (hooking), 16:36.

2nd Period-2, Hartford, Newbury 15 (Potter, Ambuhl), 0:47. 3, Hartford, Locke 30 (Dupont, Crowder), 1:02. 4, Hartford, Byers 24 (Potter, Locke), 3:46 (pp). 5, Hartford, McKelvie 2 (Newbury, Byers), 6:23. 6, Hartford, Ambuhl 7 (Crowder, Soryal), 8:32. 7, Springfield, McDonald 12 (O’Marra, Reddox), 17:48. 8, Hartford, Ambuhl 8 (Garlock, Potter), 18:36 (sh). 9, Hartford, Locke 31 (Dupont, Williams), 19:54. Penalties-Donald Spr (roughing, roughing), 1:02; Taylor Spr (cross-checking, roughing, roughing, unsportsmanlike conduct), 1:02; Crowder Hfd (roughing, roughing), 1:02; Dupont Hfd (roughing, roughing), 1:02; Taylor Spr (fighting), 9:02; Nightingale Hfd (fighting), 9:02; Soryal Hfd (roughing), 14:57; Brashear Hfd (roughing), 17:48.

3rd Period-10, Springfield, Minard 21 (Petry), 4:29 (pp). 11, Springfield, Fretter 25 (Hisey, Gimblett), 6:27. 12, Springfield, Beca 1 (VandeVelde, Trukhno), 12:23. Penalties-Williams Hfd (high-sticking), 4:02; Newbury Hfd (cross-checking), 7:00; Del Grosso Spr (fighting), 19:20; Fretter Spr (hooking), 19:20; Newbury Hfd (instigating, fighting, game misconduct – instigator (last 5:00)), 19:20.

Shots on Goal-Springfield 6-11-16-33. Hartford 3-23-5-31.

Power Play Opportunities-Springfield 2 of 7; Hartford 1 of 2.

Goalies-Springfield, Pitton 2-6-0 (26 shots-19 saves); Roy 0-1-0 (5 shots-5 saves). Hartford, Johnson 23-18-2 (33 shots-28 saves).

A-7,275