WOLF PACK DOUBLE UP CHECKERS FRIDAY NIGHT
By: Jason Alwang, Hartford Wolf Pack
HARTFORD, CT: The Hartford Wolf Pack defensemen scored all four of the team’s goals, with Brandon Scanlin scoring the game-winner, in a 4-2 win over the Charlotte Checkers in front of 5,687 at the XL Center on Friday.
“I thought that was the best sixty minutes we played. We defended well, and we had a lot of looks.” Wolf Pack Head Coach Grant Potulny said. “To get the contributions from the blue line was the difference in the game.”
The game-winner came after the Wolf Pack put pressure on Charlotte’s starting netminder, Chris Driedger. At 6:25, Scanlin put the puck past Driedger, who could not recover from the net-front pressure, and the Wolf Pack had a 3-1 lead.
The Wolf Pack took an early lead, scoring the game’s first goal at 3:13 of the opening period.
Connor Mackey scored his first goal of the season off a point shot that found the top right corner of the Charlotte net. Mackey’s goal came off a pass at the blue line from Matthew Roberston, who had received the puck from Ryder Korczak. The two received the assists on the goal.
After the Pack’s Bryce McConnell-Barker was sent off for tripping, the Checkers capitalized on the ensuing power play at 11:47. Charlotte had puck control and moved it quickly from Ryan McAllister to Aidan McDonough. This caused Pack starting netminder Louis Domingue (21 saves) to shift rapidly in his net to keep up. However, the puck moved faster than Domingue did, and he was out of position, giving Kyle Criscuolo a wide-open net to shoot at, and he buried his sixth of the season to knot the game at one.
After being sent down to the AHL by the parent New York Rangers on Wednesday, Victor Mancini made his presence felt in his first game with the Pack, scoring his first goal with a shot from the side of the net ricocheting the puck off Driedger’s right leg at 3:23 of the third period to give the Pack their second lead of the game at 2-1.
“It’s not as easy as people think it is to come from the NHL to the AHL,” Potulny said of Mancini’s first game in Hartford. “He transitioned into this game and made his presence felt right away.”
With just under five minutes left in regulation, the Checkers would cut the deficit to a single goal when John Leonard tallied his fifth of the season off a pass from Riese Gaber to the left of Domingue. Leonard snuck it behind him and cut the lead to 3-2, but that would be as close as the Checkers would get.
The Pack would add an empty-net fourth goal when Casey Fitzgerald, the newly-minted team captain, scored from the far side of the Wolf Pack side of the ice, making the final score 4-2.
Mancini spoke of his joy in reuniting with teammates he shared the ice with during the Rangers’ NHL training camp in Tarrytown. “(These guys are) great teammates, great guys to talk to in the locker room. To be around them again has been pretty fun.”
The Wolf Pack (6-5-1-1) will seek revenge as they take on the Providence Bruins Saturday night after their defeat last Sunday 4-2 in Providence.
