CANTLON’S CORNER: PACK PREPARE FOR LAST HOME GAME BEFORE CHRISTMAS 

BY: Gerry Cantlon, Howlings

CROMWELL, CT – The Hartford Wolf Pack return home from North Carolina with the glass somewhere between half-full and half-empty.

The half-full part comes from their performance in holding the high-octane Charlotte Checkers at bay for two games. The half-empty is that with all that good, they couldn’t generate the necessary offense to complement their fine defensive work and still find themselves sliding down the conference and league’s standings.

Is it time to start seeing a game like the one they have coming up against Providence as a must win?

“We look at the game like most of our games. We want to build off some of the good things we did in Charlotte, the number one team in the league. If you’re playing bad, it’s half empty,” Head Coach Keith McCambridge said. “We felt we played good enough to win which we did. The glass is clearly half-full and there are some good things to build off of by this group. There is no negativity here right now, no ‘Whoa is me.’ Guys are working very hard.”

The Bruins rise in the standings hasn’t gone unnoticed.

“We have seen them coming up and they’re playing good hockey right now. Their defensive side of the puck is much improved from when we played them earlier, but there are areas we can play well against them and try to exploit things.”

The Wolf Pack have lost five in a row, currently the worst streak in the league. Despite the weekend’s defensive stinginess, the Pack is still the AHL’s fifth-worst defense with 99 goals against. They’re 21^st in offensive production. Hartford sits seventh in the Atlantic Division just one point ahead of the Hershey Bears with 24 points. Their record is 11-14-1. They’re 15th out of 16 teams in the Eastern conference and 27th out of all 31 AHL teams.

Providence has seen many of its own recalls by the Bruins returned as Boston has gotten healthy. The P-Bruins are now ahead of the Wolf Pack in the standings with 29 points and a record of 12-11-5-0.

“I like the progress in our development. We have some really good periods of play. It’s just a matter of us getting that finale caution (goals scored) because we have had stretches where we have played well and you’re going to have ups and downs during the season. We just haven’t been rewarded for our efforts like our last game,” McCambridge said.

McCambridge has a perplexing issue with two veteran goalies, but who to start against the Bruins? Marek Mazanec hasn’t played in over a month with his last start coming on November 18th against the Rochester Americans. Dustin Tokarski was sent back from his recall and hasn’t played a game in three weeks. His last start came on December 1^st against Charlotte.

“We’re aware Maz hasn’t played and Georgy (Alexander Georgiev) came down here to get some games under his belt. That’s part of the reason we’re here as a development team.” McCambridge said. “Tokarski, before he got the opportunity to go to New York, was playing some good hockey for us. So Dustin will play in net for us tomorrow.”

The lineup shuffle at the forward position will continue as Boo Nieves was recalled for at least a month with Jesper Fast out with a suspected shoulder injury. Matt Beleskey returns giving McCambridge a potentially strong line of Peter Holland, Vinni Lettieri, and Beleskey. It could be the antidote to concentrate the team’s top talent of their best offensive assets together.

“We have to be careful in doing that. Putting everything on one line, even with the last change (at home), you might get them up against their number one defense. We prefer to have several different types (of players) on our lines. We have to have shooters, retrievers, and players in front of the net. That’s the balance you have to have. Certainly, you don’t want three perimeter players. We need to have balance on all our lines.”

The scourge of the AHL is the ever-changing roster you have to deal with many times is affecting the Wolf Pack.

“Finding chemistry is another component and when you have lots of roster movement as we have been lately, it’s hard to come by. It takes time. Whether you have lots of practice time to get some reps in before playing or getting players and getting them on the ice and lately it’s been the later.”

The Pack will bus up to Rochester (18-7-2-0), who are 7-3 in their last 10, for a pair of games with the leader of the AHL North Division on Friday and Saturday. Following that, the teams will head out on a four day Christmas hiatus. Defenseman Zach Redmond leads the well-balanced Americans offense with his AHL leading 14 goals among defenseman and 24 points, and six powerplay goals, and six game-winning goals.

“There are no easy games here, and Rochester is where they are for a reason like Charlotte.”

NOTES:

NHL Holiday Trade and Demotion Freeze starts tomorrow and lasts until December 27^th. Given the Pack’s current 0-5 slide, and the Rangers are 1-7 a post-holiday trade seems very possible,

AHL CCM/Player of the Week is Bridgeport’s Michael Del Colle with five goals and plus five in two games.

Ex-Nighthawk, Scott Gordon, will be the Philadelphia Flyers interim head coach after the sacking of Dave Hakstol on Monday. He has been solid behind the bench for Lehigh Valley in the regular season but has their problems in the post-season. He coached the Islanders for three seasons 2008-2011.

It’s no surprise Providence saw center Martin Bakos exit and has signed for the remainder of the year with HC Sochi (Russia-KHL).

Ex-Pack Joey Leach is signed to a PTO deal by Hershey who was playing with South Carolina (ECHL).

Ex-Pack Charles Williams just returned from Ontario signs a deal with Binghamton.

Tom Sestito ends his short retirement and signs with the Toronto Marlies.

Some minor player moves include Alex Lyon (Yale) again being sent back to Lehigh Valley. Jon Gillies (Salisbury Prep) goes back to Stockton, while Michael Garteig (Quinnipiac) heads back to Newfoundland (ECHL) from Toronto. At forward, former UCONN Husky, Spencer Naas, recalled from Idaho (ECHL) by Texas.

Former QU Bobcat Justin Agosta signs with Manchester (ECHL).

Brady Shaw, the son of former Hartford Whaler Brad Shaw, was traded from Orlando (ECHL) to Ft. Wayne (ECHL).

A trio of former Beast of New Haven players have all resurfaced in coaching. Lance Ward is the new head coach of Lloydminster (AJHL). David Nemirovsky is the head coach with the Torpedo Novgorod (Russia-KHL), and Mike Fountain is an assistant coach with a Brick, NJ Bantam U-14 team.

Former Wolf Pack, Andres Ambuhl, a Swiss native, signs a two-year extension with HC Davos of the NLA League and presently is their team captain.

Former Providence Bruin, Maxime Sauve, suffered another concussion playing for the HC Bordeaux Boxer in the French Elite League and after consulting doctors has decided to hang up his skates.

Ex-Sound Tiger, Jake Newton, has left Bayreuth (Germany-DEL-2) for yet another unnamed European team.

Former New Haven Nighthawk, Francois “Frank” Breault, has seen his son Jakob play with the Notre Dame Hounds (SJHL).

Sadly, late yesterday, Yale announced that an exhibition game with the Chinese National Development Team for next Friday was canceled ostensibly because they could not field a team, but several college sources indicate that the team could not secure the required visas.

The Bulldogs have rescheduled the game for the following night in another exhibition against McGill University of Montreal who play in the OUAA conference in Canada.

After yesterday’s practice, there was a USPHL Premier Junior game between the Hartford Jr. Wolf Pack and the CT Junior Rangers.

Two players on the Jr. Rangers roster come from West Haven. They are Peter Richetelli and goalie Brandon Serenson.

Richetelli’s father, Mike Richetelli, is the head coach of the Amity HS (Woodbridge) varsity team. They play in Division II while Serenson’s father, Bob Serenson, has been a goalie coach and goalie instructor in all levels of hockey in West Haven for years. Among them include the first CT junior team in the Metropolitan Junior Hockey League (METJHL), CT Junior Wolves. He also played collegiately for the Quinnipiac College Braves (ECAC North) when they were a Division II program in the mid-80’s.

The Program Director of the team is ex-Wolf Pack, Sound Tiger, Yale Bulldog, and Avon Old Farms player, Jeff Hamilton.

The Wolf Pack came from behind and beat the Rangers, 4-3.