BY: Gerry Cantlon, Howlings
HARTFORD, CT – An early third-period penalty led to a Providence Bruins powerplay goal that allowed them to edge out the Hartford Wolf Pack, 3-2, in a very hard-fought contest Sunday afternoon at the XL Center.
The Wolf Pack record slips to 31-16-6-5 (73 points) and the team sits in third place in the Atlantic Division. Providence meanwhile sees its record improve to 34-18-3-3 (74 points). They take-over second-place from Hartford. The Baby bruins have now won eight straight games.
The Charlotte Checkers are in fourth place and trail the Wolf Pack by five points.
Early in the third period, a bad neutral zone tripping penalty by Pack captain, Steve Fogarty, led to the goal that would allow Providence to regain the lead they would not relinquish.
The Bruins’ puck possession skills that had been on display all game paid dividends on the man-advantage in just 17 seconds.
Jack Studnicka sent the puck over to Peter Cehlarik. He fired a shot that was saved by J.F. Berube, but he was unable to corral the loose puck and Brendan Gaunce was right there to smack it into the net at 2:40. For Gaunce, it was his 17th goal of the season.
The Wolf Pack made a strong effort to tie the game, especially in the final two minutes.
With Berube pulled for an extra attacker, the Pack would come their closest to scoring. Vitali Kravtsov rang a shot off the inside of the right post with 1:15 remaining. Vinni Lettieri took a short side slapper that was stopped by Max Lagace (21 saves) and Fogarty saw his bid denied as well.
“That’s what’s happened in our games with Providence this year. Something happens late in the game or a period. They scored a goal from the corner in one game, I believe with 30 seconds left. They don’t always go in your favor. We had everything in our favor in trying to tie the game up, but we missed. We had three really great scoring chances, six on five. It was three-in-three. The guys coulda quit. It’s hard playing three-in-three against a very good team and down 2-0. We did everything to try to get it to overtime,” said Knoblauch, doing his best to hide the impact of the tough loss.
The Wolf Pack finally got some open ice and time with the puck and picked up their first goal midway through the second period.
On a Bruins dump in, Libor Hajek commandeered the puck and started moving up the ice on the left-wing side. Hajek passed it over to Lettieri, who side-stepped getting nailed at the blue line and moved into center ice. Lettieri put a pass back to Hajek as he sailed down the left-wing. Nobody was going to catch him as he ripped his first of the season going top shelf to the far side at 11:56.
“Libor did a great job to get the puck up the ice and gave us a real jump when we needed it,” remarked Knoblauch.
Another jumpstart was Nick Ebert, not the heavyweight pugilist, getting into a scrap with a much bigger Brendan Woods, who is a lefty. Ebert got the Pack going.
“We got that first goal and Nicky dropped the gloves really got us going and we got another late in the period. We battled hard the rest of the period,” said Tim Gettinger
The Wolf Pack evened things up at two on a set of smart passes.
A backhand dump in from Ebert behind the Bruins net that left the puck a little between Bruins goalie Max Lagace and defenseman Nick Zboril, who both arrived at the puck at the same time.
Zboril eventually took possession and rimmed it up the left-wing boards, but just jumping on for his shift was Jeff LoVerde, who got the puck and sent it to Patrick Newell along the right-wing boards.
Newell made a quick play from off the right-wing half-wall put the shot toward the net.
The puck found Gettinger’s red-hot stick as he got to the front of the net and scored his third goal in two games and 15th of the season off a perfect deflection at 14:05.
“He (LoVerde) made a great play to Patty, luckily I was able to put in,” Gettinger said while downplaying his own contribution.
The Bruins came into the game having won seven-in-a-row. In the first period, they showed why as they scored their first two goals of the game.
The first goal was scored shorthanded by the Bruins with surgical precision at 11:41.
Danny O’Regan lost the puck on his rush attempt ice.
The puck went back to the Bruins left defenseman, Jason Zboril, who passed it over to his partner Josiah Didier who nailed a diagonal pass from the defensive zone to the Wolf Pack blue line to Trent Frederic. The Bruins second-leading scorer then hit a speeding Oskar Steen racing down the right-wing with a perfect pass that he redirected in full flight for his seventh of the season.
The second goal was again a lightning strike by the Bruins using handy stick work.
This time an outlet pass meant for Fogarty never arrived.
Cameron Hughes intercepted a pass and then on a dime quickly curled to the net and fed Jack Studnicks who put in his 22nd of the season at 11:32.
“We weren’t playing our best. They were taking it to us. They got pucks deep. We weren’t moving our feet and in the second and third we finally got our feet moving and we starting getting chances. We just didn’t have enough (at the end),” said Gettinger.
It sets up a very critical three-in-three next weekend with two home games against the Hershey Bears.
LINES:
O’Regan-Kravtsov-Fogarty
Jones-Newell-Gropp
Beleskey-Lettieri-Gettinger
McBride-Dmowski-Ronning
Hajek-Raddysh
LoVerde-Geersten
Ebert-Rykov
SCRATCHES:
Boo Nieves – Upper-body – Injury day-to-day.
Brandon Crawley – Healthy
Greg Chase – Healthy
Gabriel Fontaine – Shoulder Surgery – Season-Ending
NOTES:
J.F. Berube has 23 saves on the game for Hartford.
Lettieri had six shots and Kravtsov had four to pace the Wolf Pack. D-men Didier and ex-Pack, Steven Kampfer, with four shots each paced the Bruins’ shots.
Matt Beleskey had the second scrap of the game with a much bigger Alex Petrovic early in the third.
One lineup change was Jake Elmer, who was sent back to the team’s ECHL affiliate, the Maine Mariners. The Wolf Pack recalled Greg Chase, who’s the nephew of former Hartford Whaler, Kelly Chase. He was scratched as was Elmer since he was recalled.
Among the six Bruins scratches was Wiley Sherman (Greenwich/Hotchkiss Prep).
Wolf Pack Fan Jerseys Of The Game: Wolf Pack #10 Brian Gibbons (Charlotte), CT Whale, Michael Haley (Rangers) and CT Whale #86 Wojtech Wolski (SC Bern Switzerland LNA).
Very classy gesture by the entire Bruins team to go shake hands with linesman Mike Baker and Derek Wahl, who were working their last AHL games as a linesman.
We were alerted they had received a curiously worded e-mail “Pick your last game,“ earlier in the week as notice their contracts would not be renewed for next season.
