BY: Gerry Cantlon, Howlings
HARTFORD, CT – Two ex-Hartford Wolf Pack players lead the Utica Comets to a 4-0 shutout victory over their former team before an announced crowd of 3,980 at the XL Center on Saturday night.
Tom Pyatt paced the win with a goal and an assist ex-Pack goalie Marek Mazanec recording his first shutout of the season in his eighth game for Utica. It was also the fourth time the Wolf Pack have been held scoreless this season and the Comets scored via even strength, powerplay, and a shorthanded goal.
The Comets outplayed, a clearly youthful, professionally inexperienced Wolf Pack squad with half their forwards lacing their skates up with less than four games under their belt Saturday night at the XL Center.
“We didn’t have the puck very much tonight. I think they had a majority of the play the first half of the game. Tough to play when you’re down 3-0. We worked and got a better slice of the game in the third, but we weren’t able to play a 200-foot game most of the night,” remarked Pack head coach, Keith McCambridge.
For Utica, the win snapped a four-game losing streak and was just their second win in eleven games. The win boosted their record to the .500 mark at 32-32-6-2 (72 points) and seventh place in the North Division. The Comets play in Providence against the Bruins tomorrow afternoon.
The Wolf Pack record falls to 28-34-7-3 (65 points) for eighth place in the Atlantic division and have lost five-in-a-row with four games left in the season, one of which comes Sunday afternoon against the Binghamton Devils at 3 pm.
The Comets were launching shots like a meteor shower throughout the first period in which they outshot the Wolf Pack, 17-8.
Utica scored early. Jonah Gajdovich had inside position on the Wolf Pack defenseman. Gajdovich took a cross-ice feed from Lukas Jasek that was tipped in the air. The Czech finished for the third time of the season at 2:15.
The entire scoring sequence came about as the Comets Brendan Gaunce was at the left point and got a wraparound cleared by Josh Wesley and sent it back to Jasek at the goal line on the left wing side. Wesley peeled back chased him up the right wing boards creating the mismatch that Gajdovitch took advantage of.
“We just didn’t get another good start and you fall behind it’s not easy to fight back from. We battled back in spurts, but we just didn’t do enough to win the game,” remarked Ryan Gropp.
The Pack, as they did early in the week against Springfield, surrendered another shorthanded goal.
Matt Register got knocked off the puck and lost his stick in the process. Reid Boucher created the turnover along the lower right wing boards and then sent a crisp short pass to Pyatt, who wasted little time and snapped his fifth goal past Pack starter Adam Huska at 9:16.
“It felt really good. I haven’t scored one in a while,“ Pyatt said. “Credit to Reid. He did all the work on that play to get the puck first and made a perfect pass.”
Pyatt played for the Wolf Pack ten years ago.
The Wolf Pack’s best chance of the period came late with 3:05 remaining. The Pack had just four shots but just two quality shots. One of those quality shots came from rookie Patrick Newall, who got a good lead pass from Gropp, his linemate, with a clean chance on the right wing and Mazanec, made a glove save, his toughest save of the entire game.
“You can see the skill set he has, the vision, the speed, and with time and more play his play will evolve and surely get better. We just need more of that from all parts of the lineup, “ said McCambridge.
Gropp was duly impressed with his play.
“Newsy certainly has a shot and really good speed and if we get more time he will do pretty good here.”
The Comets tallied their third goal in the second period again courtesy of sloppy play in their own end of the ice by Hartford.
Pyatt fired the pass to Zach MacEwan who put a one-timer on net that Huska stopped, but the rebound was in the crease area and Cam Darcy got his stick on it before a Wolf Pack defenseman and swept his tenth of the season into the back of the net at 10:02.
Huska made a great breakaway stop on MacEwan with 38.4 seconds left the second period
MacEwan closed out the scoring with an empty-netter with 52.3 seconds left in the contest for his 21st goal, a minute after the Wolf Pack took a timeout to try to ruin Mazanec’s bid for a shutout to no avail.
“It would have been better if we kept things simpler, got more bodies at the net, but we shied away from that too much and we just were never able to generate enough offense,” said Gropp.
NOTES:
Huska played his first back-to-back pair of games in his brief pro career. Brandon Halverson will start tomorrow against Binghamton
Bobby Butler and Brandon Crawley wore A’s for the first time.
Stratford native, and former Fairfield Prep and Salisbury Prep high school player, Jamie Sifers was in the starting lineup for Utica.
Rangers won their regular season finale 4-3 in overtime over Pittsburgh. Ryan Lindgren played, but John Gilmour and Vinni Lettieri did not. There was no word if any of three will be reassigned to Hartford for tomorrow’s game.
Wolf Pack fan jersey of the night: #39 Nik Latta playing hockey in the German DEL league and a real golden oldie #2 Burke Henry now retired working in real estate in Florida.
SCRATCHES:
Dawson Leedal (Upper Body)
Shawn O’Donnell (Healthy)
Matt Beleskey (Lower Body, likely out for the rest of the season)
Rob O’Gara (Lower Body, out for tomorrow)
Shawn St. Amant (Healthy)
Chris Bigras (Ankle, done for the season)
LINES:
Fogarty-Gropp-Newell
Fontaine-Meskanen-Gettinger
Butler-Dmowski-Shawn McBride
Jones-Jake Elmer-Lewis Zerter-Gossage
Day-Raddysh
Wesley-Crawley
Bergman-Register
