BY: Gerry Cantlon, Howlings
HARTFORD, CT – Dustin Tokarski’s 26 saves, a strong two-point game from Lias Andersson, and a game-winning powerplay tally by John Gilmour combined to propel the Hartford Wolf Pack to their fourth win in a row and second consecutive victory over the Springfield Thunderbirds, 3-1 before 3,798 fans on Friday night at the XL Center.
“I liked our start,” a relaxed Pack head coach Keith McCambridge said. “We created some good energy to start the game and both teams traded chances back and forth on special teams. We liked the type of game we played tonight.”
The Wolf Pack record improves to 16-15-12-2 (36 points) and the team sits in sixth place. They are now just one point behind Springfield (15-12-4-3). The Pack will entertain the third-place Lehigh Valley Phantoms Saturday at 7 pm.
In the third period, the Wolf Pack penalty kill continued its strong play. Andersson nearly had a shorthanded tally on the PK while the overall team defense handled the high octane Springfield offense quite well.
“We weren’t happy with how many penalties we took, but we’re happy how we defended against them. Springfield has a lot of offense over there. We did video before the game so we know how good they are.”
While Tokarski did not face a lot of shots, the ones he did were high-quality scoring chances and led to two big third period saves on Jonathan Ang at 12:31 and then 15 seconds later on Matt Mangene.
The Pack pushed back hard on their next shift as Chris Bigras and Steven Fogarty had great chances stopped by the Thunderbirds’ Samuel Montembeault.
“We know we have to close out games in the third period and tonight we really did just that.”
The second period was filled with a series of power plays for each squad with limited five-on-five play.
The save of the game, and perhaps the season, would rank with any of the best from some made by other Wolf Pack greats including J.F. Labbe, Jason LaBarbera, Dov Grumet-Morris and Yann Danis.
Tokarski’s magic came when Springfield’s Blaine Byron was at the left point and ripped a low slap-shot that the Pack netminder handled. The rebound came right to Mangene who fired a bullet that Tokarski somehow found, and gloved on the ice,
Mangene reacted by holding his head in his hands as he skated around the net in frustration. The entire XL Center crowd and the Wolf Pack players were blown away as well.
“To be honest, I thought it was going in because you saw how the rebound popped out. He got all the wood on that one, and we all were silent for a second, then we all went nuts. It was a great save and he has shown he is capable of doing that every night,” Gilmour said.
McCambridge has named Tokarski his starter for Saturday.
Each team had seven shots on net with few serious quality chances, with the Pack’s best coming off the stick of Dawson Leedahl.
The Wolf Pack grabbed a 2-0 lead and had good control of the game in the first period.
The Pack made it 1-0 when Andersson, on his second shift, was alone on the right wing side and converted a rebound from Ryan Gropp, who was in the lower left wing circle, at 7:08.
“It just bounced out to me. It was really nice play by him and it felt good putting one in,” Andersson remarked.
The Pack made it 2-0 on the powerplay.
Ville Meskanen made a perfect diagonal pass from the left side to point to Gilmour, who will represent that Wolf Pack at the AHL All-Star game. Gilmour’s blast at 10:59 was his tenth of the season and went over Montembeault’s glove to the short-side and just inside the post.
“He‘s a very deceiving, shifty player out there,” Gilmour said of Meskanen. “He shot the puck out there flat to me, and I just wanted to get everything behind the shot and it went in I was pretty ecstatic about it.”
Gilmour gave an extra fist pump after the goal horn went off.
The Pack was strong in controlling play. The only issue was penalties they were taking. The last near the end of the period came back to bite them.
Jason MacDonald was at the left point and took a feed from Mangene, his defensive partner. MacDonald whistled a low wrist shot with all sorts of traffic in front of Tokarski, who was thoroughly screened by Paul Thompson, just as MacDonalds shot came and it eluded him at 18:25.
Just before the Thunderbird goal, the Pack almost made it 3-0 with Beleskey’s shorthanded bid where he used MacDonald and Mangene as a screen. His shot hit Montemebeault in his right shoulder.
WOLF PACK LINES
Fontaine-Butler-Leedahl
Andersson-Gropp-Lettieri
Holland-Meskanen-Beleskey
Fogarty-Schneider-Gettinger
Gilmour-Hajak
Bigras-O’ Gara
Day-Lindgren
SCRATCHES
Shawn O’Donnell (Flu/Injury)
Brandon Crawley (Healthy)
Shawn St. Amant (Healthy)
Terrence Wallin (Healthy)
NOTES:
McCambridge said he has no plans to change his lineup for Saturday’s game.
The Wolf Pack’s Vince Pedrie has seen his time with the New York Rangers organization come to an end. The defenseman was placed on unconditional waivers with the purpose of terminating his contract.
Congratulations to Ryan Graves of the Colorado Avalanche. The ex-Pack scored his first NHL goal (ironically) at Madison Square Garden against the Rangers. The goal put the cap on a 6-1 win and came unassisted out in front of the Rangers net.
The US World Junior (U-18) team beat Russia 2-1 in Vancouver to advance to the gold medal game. The Americans will play in the final for the second time in three years and take on Finland who rolled past Switzerland 6-1 in the other semi-final.
Cayden Primeau, the son of ex-Whaler Keith Primeau, made 32 saves and was a standout during the final four minutes in handing the Russians their only loss of the WJC tournament.
Several AHL players have returned to the league from their various World Junior teams, among them are, Martin Necas (Charlotte/Czech Republic), Tobias Geisser (Hershey/Switzerland), plus Erik Brunnstrom, (Chicago/Sweden) and Timothy Lilejgren (Toronto/Sweden).
UCONN lost the first game of their two-game tourney in Las Vegas at the T-Mobile arena to the nationally ranked #17 team, Western Michigan Broncos, 5-1. The Broncos are 10-6-1 overall and were led by Cam Lee, and Austin Rueschhoff, who each had a goal and an assist.
UCONN did have freshmen center, Jachym Kondelik, back from the Czech Republic WJC team. He picked up an assist on the lone Huskies goal.
Huskie goalie, Adam Huska, stopped 36 of 41 shots in the loss for the Huskies who are now 6-12-1 overall.
The Huskies will play St. Lawrence at 8 pm EST on Saturday in the consolation game of the tournament.
