OT SPECIALISTS 

VERSUS    

You’ve heard of shootout specialists, well Tim Kennedy is becoming the Connecticut Whale’s overtime specialist when he buried his second OT winner in a row, both against his former team no less, and gave the Whale a 5-4 win in Portland against the Pirates Saturday night.

It was, to quote NY Yankee Hall-of-Fame catcher Yogi Berra, “Déjà vu all over again”

On Wednesday, 36 seconds into a 4-on-3 power play, Kennedy went high over starting goaltender Jhonas Enroth’s glove to send the Whale home winners. Friday night, from almost the same spot on the ice, Kennedy put it home…this time through the five-hole and it just trickled over the line into the net.

“It was kind of the same set-up,” Kennedy told reporters. “I got off by myself on the right. I almost felt bad for Jhonas (26 saves, 9-10-1) ; I whiffed and went five-hole. If the shot would have went where it was supposed to go, he probably would have stopped it.

“We got the two points,” He added. “We’d like to get them in regulation but you’ve got to give (the Pirates) credit. They worked hard and they came back.”

Three times to be exact.

The pace of the first period was so similar to Wednesday night’s game. Portland was pressing the attack and the Whale could not get anything going offensively and were pinned in their own end for quite a while. On Wednesday they were outshot 10-4 and were able to escape without surrendering any goals. Friday night they gave up 10 and shot 7 of their own, but weren’t able to escape even.

6:19 into the game, Whale starter Chad Johnson (24 saves, 12-11-3), who had managed to keep the puck out of the net despite all the pressure, was helpless after making two quick saves in succession first on Drew Schiestel and then on Matt Ellis. The shot by Ellis on the right side of the crease, hit his pad and deflected out to the left where it found Mark Mancari all alone on the left side for the easy tap in. It was 1-0.

Wednesday it was Johnson making spectacular saves to keep his team in the game. Friday night it was Enroth’s turn.

After Kennedy stole the puck, Jeremy Williams was stopped cold by Enroth when the two came in on but a single Pirate defender at 13:05.

Then just 2:05 later he rose to the occasion a second time and got his glove on a high shot by Chad Kolarik that was headed for the upper corner of the net on a breakaway from the Whale left winger.

Enroth then caught a break  with just over two minutes to go in the period when Jeremy Williams’s shot hit the post and a few moments later a turnover led to another odd man rush that Kris Newbury was unable to convert after he missed a golden opportunity off a rebound of a Brodie Dupont shot.

It didn’t take long for the Whale to knot things up in the second period.

Justin Bowers, just up on recall for his second stint with the Pirates from the Greenville Road Warriors, shot wide and the puck squirted out to the neutral zone. Kolarik picked off a pass and sprinted up the left wing side ahead of the defense. When he got to the circle, the Abington, PA. native snapped a wrister that flew over Enroth’s glove and sailed into the net just under the crossbar for his 15th of the season, 11th since joining the Whale from Springfield in the Dane Byers trade in November.

At 4:05, Paul Byron almost gave his teammates their second lead. Byron got past Pavel Valentenko and Johnson came way out of his net and dove to poke check the puck away, but the combination of the poke check and the puck being hit forward at the same moment sent it knuckle-balling in the air and almost went into the net, but Tomas Kundratek coming back on the play, swiped it out of the air with his stick turning aside a great scoring chance with an even better defensive effort.

The strong play lifted the Whale and just over six minutes later they took the game’s first lead 2-1 as two newcomers found the scoresheet in their very first game with the Whale.

Jason Williams, who was signed to a Professional Try-Out contract with the Whale on Monday (27th), fought to gather in a loose puck along the left wing edge of the blueline. Williams advanced the puck to the center of the high slot and dropped a pass off to Kolarik who had speed coming up the left wing side. Kolarik then made a pass to the wide open Todd White, also was also playing in his first game. White cleared waivers Wednesday and was assigned to Connecticut from the NY Rangers. White took the pass and ripped it from the right circle into the net past Enroth giving the Whale their first lead at 2-1 at 11:18.

That lead lasted all of 3:30.

Byron split the two Whale defenseman of Pavel Valentenko and Tomas Kundratek. Byron had a clear path to Johnson. Kundratek recovered enough to get close, but got his stick in Byron’s skates and dragged him down. Referee Ryan Hersey made the right call and awarded Byron a penalty shot on the play.

Byron came in with speed and put his shot right in the 5-hole to beat Johnson and knot the score.

After a Corey Tropp/Jared Nightingale fight at 18:12 that was pretty even, just 44 seconds later, Jason Williams joined Nightingale in the penalty box on a hooking call.

The Whale killed off the first 1:04 of the penalty to end the period on a high and they built on it in the third period.

With the Pirates on a power play to start the period, the Whale, who entered the game as the only team in the AHL to not score a shorthanded score, found the back of the net while shorthanded.

The Whale got the puck in deep and went to work. Wade Redden made yet another strong play for the Whale when he kept the puck in the zone out by the blueline and fed it down low below the right side of the goal-line to Dupont. In turn, Dupont saw Newbury all by his lonesome in the slot and put the perfect pass right on his stick. Newbury knocked it into the net when the shot hit the right post and went in past Enroth for his 5th of the season. The Whale were back on top 3-2.

Exactly five minutes later the Pirates got a nice looking goal on a cross slot feed from Maxime Legault to Bowers on the left side and beat Johnson for his first career AHL goal. Again…the score was tied.

Just shy of two minutes was all it took for the tie to be broken. Again, the Whale would pull out in front. Jason Williams would get his first goal as a member of the Whale when he would take a Redden feed from 35’ out from the top of the circles buried a wrister through traffic and into the back of the Pirate net. The way Enroth reacted it looked like he never saw it.

The Whale looked like they were going to expand their lead when Kennedy got a breakaway opportunity just 35 seconds later, but Enroth stoned his former teammate.

This Pirate team would just not go away. They continued to fight back and at 9:33 they would tie the score for the third time.

Colin Stuart proved the old adage that, “Any shot on goal is a good shot on goal,” when he had the puck in the left corner and just threw it at the net. The puck got lost in Johnson’s skates and squirted in over the net for Stuart’s seventh and the game’s fourth tie at four.

It certainly seemed odd when Jeremy Williams was called for a hook at 11:32 giving the Pirates their fourth power play to none for the Whale that penalties were not only skewed one way, but were looking like they were going to be a factor. They were.

The Whale were successful in turning aside the Portland power play unit and at 13:57, some 53:57 into the game, got their first power play, when Alex Biega was sent off for a High Stick.

At 15:29 it sure looked like Ryan McDonagh had broken the deadlock when his shot from in tight in the left circle went over the blocker and under the crossbar and in, but Ryan Hersey said it was no goal and play continued on.

That play set off a string of oddball moments as the Pirates had a parade to the penalty box.

Biega went back to solitary at 16:33 for holding Evgeny Grachev, who made another cameo appearance with an effort on a shift to draw the penalty.

But while killing off that penalty, Marc-Andre Gragnani got called for a pure laziness and unnecessary tripping call to Newbury at 17:37 creating the first of two 5-on-3 power plays for the visitors.

The 5-on-3 looked awful as even two men up the Whale could not get set up in the zone and wasted the majority of their 57 second advantage chasing the puck back in their own end and even had to deal with an offensive surge from the Pirates who brought up the puck into the offensive zone.

Biega got out of the box at 18:33 but was quickly replaced by Tim Conboy at 19:18 when from his own defensive zone the Pirate defenseman flipped the puck out of play for the dreaded Delay of Game call.

The Pirates killed off the 42 seconds of power play in regulation just as they had done when Gragnani got tagged with a tripping call Wednesday night in Hartford with 28.4 left. But as it did in both scenarios, it gave the Whale a 4-on-3 advantage in overtime for the second consecutive game and the their one time AHL all-rookie team representative made them pay for a second straight game  as the 6,733 in attendance were sent home seeing an almost carbon copy goal of the one that had done them in on Wednesday night.

Pirate head coach Kevin Dineen put it all in perspective, “We had our power-play opportunities early,”  He said. “The score sheet would be skewed to our favor for the penalties to start, and obviously it really got balanced out at the end.”

Bob Crawford called it and recapped it at CTWhale.com. For the Portland perspective we turn to Paul Betit at the PressHerald.com.

GAME SUMMARY and OFFICIAL SCORERS SHEET

NOTES:

* Redden has assisted on all of the Whale’s 4 overtime goals, highest in the AHL

* Prior to Kennedy, nobody had ever scored overtime game winners in back-to-back games.

* The Whale are now considered to be 5 games over .500 for the first time this season at 17-12-2-5. However if you were to count losses as losses, they’re still 17-19.  If wins and losses counted that way, Manchester would still be 1st at 22-14 (22-11-1-1) at .611, Portland would still be 2nd with a record of 18-15 (18-10-4-1) at .545, Bridgeport would move up from 4th to 3rd at 18-17 (18-14-1-2) at .514. The Whale’s .472 would be just percentage points ahead of Worcester at 16-18 (16-12-2-4) and their .470. Springfield would still be sixth at 15-19 (15-15-1-3) .441 and last would still be Providence at 13-18 (13-15-2-1) at .419.

* Last season the then Wolf Pack were deadly on the PK and led the AHL with 18 shorthanded goals. This season it took 36 games for the Whale to register their first.

* The Whale have played more OT games than any other AHL team with 13 and now have a record of 4-2-7 in extra time.

* The Pirates have dropped their last five of six and the Whale move into a second place tie although Portland has three games in hand on their Connecticut neighbors.

* The two teams don’t meet again until January 29th in Hartford and will have another home-and-home February 5-6 with the first this time in Portland on Saturday and the next afternoon in Hartford. That was some solid scheduling. A 7pm game Saturday night in MAINE and then an afternoon game at 3 the next day.

* January has the Whale playing 8 games at home and 5 on the road, but February looks to be a brutal month for the Whale. They have just 3 home games and will play eight on the road with two games in Canada and two games in Charlotte, NC.

LINES:

Dupont – Newbury – Tessier
Grachev – Kennedy – Je. Williams
Kolarik – White – Ja. Williams
Soryal – Garlock – DiDiomete

Redden – Nightingale
Valentenko – Kundratek
McDonagh – Bickel

Johnson
Talbot

(Assistant Captains Bold and Italicized)

SCRATCHES:

Jyri Niemi – Healthy Scratch
Oren Eizenman – Healthy Scratch

THREE STARS:

1. CT – T. Kennedy
2. POR – P. Byron
3. CT – W. Redden

ON ICE OFFICIALS:

Referee:
Ryan Hersey (46)

Linesmen:
Landon Bathe (80)
Jeremy Lovett (78)

NEXT GAME:

The Whale start the New Year with a pair at the XL Center, Saturday at 5pm against the Providence Bruins and Sunday at 3pm against Manchester.  Bob Crawford and the pregame hit the air 30 minutes before each game.

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

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:

Connecticut Whale 5 (OT) at Portland Pirates 4 – Status: Final OT
Friday, December 31, 2010 – Cumberland County Civic Center

Connecticut 0 2 2 1 – 5
Portland 1 1 2 0 – 4

1st Period-1, Portland, Mancari 14 (Ellis, Schiestel), 6:19. Penalties-DiDiomete Ct (roughing, fighting), 8:08; Conboy Por (fighting), 8:08.

2nd Period-2, Connecticut, Kolarik 15   2:43. 3, Connecticut, White 1 (Kolarik, Williams), 11:18. 4, Portland, Byron 12   14:48 (TXT_PS). Penalties-McDonagh Ct (interference), 6:43; Nightingale Ct (fighting), 18:12; Tropp Por (fighting), 18:12; Williams Ct (hooking), 18:56.

3rd Period-5, Connecticut, Newbury 5 (Dupont, Redden), 0:23 (SH). 6, Portland, Bowers 1 (Legault, Biega), 5:23. 7, Connecticut, Williams 1 (Redden, White), 7:20. 8, Portland, Stuart 7 (Tropp, Byron), 9:33. Penalties-Williams Ct (hooking), 11:32; Biega Por (high-sticking), 13:57; Biega Por (holding), 16:33; Gragnani Por (tripping), 17:37; Conboy Por (delay of game), 19:18.

OT Period-9, Connecticut, Kennedy 6 (Redden), 0:24 (PP). Penalties-No Penalties

Shots on Goal-Connecticut 7-11-12-1-31. Portland 10-10-8-0-28.
Power Play Opportunities-Connecticut 1 / 4; Portland 0 / 4.
Goalies-Connecticut, Johnson 12-11-3 (28 shots-24 saves). Portland, Enroth 9-10-1 (31 shots-26 saves).
A-6,733
Referees-Ryan Hersey (46).
Linesmen-Landon Bathe (80), Jeremy Lovett (78).