THE GOOD, THE BAD &THE UGLY

   VERSUS        

ROUND ONE – GAME TWO

Paying Francois St. Laurent to “referee” AHL hockey games is like giving AIG executives bonuses for failing their company…they both are got paid to fail at what they do and both leave you feeling frustrated and angry.

St. Laurent made such a mess of Game Two of the best of seven series between the Hartford Wolf Pack and the Worcester Sharks that there was only 4:22 of five-on-five hockey in the first period and only 1:03 in the last 17 1/2 minutes of the third. The longest stretch of the game where St. Laurent didn’t call a penalty was between 5:51 and 11:59 of the second period, a span of 6:08. Compare that to referee Jeff Smith, who’s also awful for just the opposite reason, he calls nothing, who refereed the Rockford-Milwaukee game, he called one power play the entire game and that only occurred because he gave one of the players a double minor. That’s just plain embarrassing by anyone’s, except the NHL and AHL’s, standards. Incidentally, St. Laurent has already worked a couple of games in the NHL and is highly regarded as the most likely candidate to replace future Hall-of-Fame referee, the retiring Terry Koharski. Good luck with that. Talk about going from one extreme to the other.

They did actually play a game Saturday night that the Pack won 5-3 in front of 2,703 at the XL Center. Despite the media voting Jordan Owens the game’s First Star, and he was excellent and a catalyst all over the ice, the primary reason the Pack now hold a 2-0 lead in this series heading to Worcester for games three and four starting Monday night, has been the otherworldly performance between the pipes by Wolf Pack netminder, Matt Zaba (44 saves, 2-0).  In the two games that have been played the Pack have been outshot 85-42. Of the 85 shots that Zaba has faced, only three have turned the goal light on. That gives the Colorado College alumnus a staggering .965 save percentage and a fabulous 1.50 goals against average. To examine it another way, Zaba has surrendered three goals over the 119:27 that Zaba has been on the ice.

Mike Ouellette, who scored what proved to be the winning goal in the third period, told the media after the game,  “Thankfully Zaba is a rock back there, and we’ve been leaning on him for a long time. He’s the best player on the team right now.”

Ouellette’s goal came after the Pack had wasted a three goal lead built in a first period that saw Zaba kept his teammates in the contest standing tall against a season high barrage of 22 shots against. The Pack managed to put three past Worcester starter, Thomas Greiss (14 saves, 0-2) on only eight shots. 

The Pack were atrocious in the second period where they got badly outshot, 19-5 and shorthanded four times including a 22 second span down two men. “We got the lead and then did some things that aren’t scripted, ad-libbing a bit,” said Wolf Pack coach Ken Gernander to the media. “That puts more pressure on guys taking penalties and more pressure on your goaltender. But you have to realize you have to play puck possession and get it deep in their defensive zone, which is something we didn’t do a very good job of recognizing.”

The Rangers top farm club ended up surrendering two goals in 29 seconds and then a third to tie the score 4:20 later. “Why would you start to run-and-gun and get more high risk and detract from what had got you the lead?  We overburdened some guys with the amount of penalty killing they had to do.” Gernander said. “It was a chippy game, and it’s going to be a long, chippy series. I think they were getting desperate and searching for any way to get us off our game, and it worked (in the second period). But then we refocused and found our bearings.” Ouellette added. 

Early in the third period, Owens took the puck from the left side behind the net and advanced it to the right. The right winger saw Dan Byers all by himself in the right corner and fed him the puck. “"I just put my stick (down) to give Byers an option." Ouellette said after the game. “I had my back to the net and he just put the puck on my stick, I spun and put it on net. I didn’t even look. It just found a way in.”  At 2:23 of the third period the Pack had a lead that they would not yield.

Artem Anisimov continued to lift the team offensively. 3:40 into the game, on the Pack’s first power play, the Russian center got past Shark defenseman Mike Moore behind the net and ran down his defensive partner Kyle McLaren and stripped him of the puck. The second year center then slung it past Greiss on a wraparound for the early lead.

At 7:08, Owens got his first AHL playoff goal of his career when he scored a fluke goal from the right wing half boards. Owens made a nice move with the puck and slipped past veteran Patrick Traverse. Owens then just flipped it on net and the puck hit both of Jason Demers’ skates and slid into the far corner of the Shark’s net.

Less than five minutes later, The Pack would strike again with another first career AHL playoff goal, this one coming off the stick of Bobby Sanguinetti. The rookie defenseman took a nice drop pass from captain Greg Moore at the top of the left circle. Moore made a bee-line for the net and drew both Demers and ex-Pack center Cory Larose with him. Sanguinetti fired on net and the puck glanced off Demers and changed direction which threw off Greiss and it wound up in the net. Greiss looked very frustrated afterwards on his knees just shaking his head.

The Sharks had some outstanding scoring chances to score in the first, but Zaba was just sensational. Not only was he dealing with a ton of shots, but he was being run into almost on a shift-by-shift basis. Cory Potter has seen enough when Dan DaSilva mad no effort to even slow down before piling on the Pack netminder. Potter swung his stick between DaSilva and Zaba and then gave him a two handed shove to the ice. Rather than penalizing DaSilva and putting a stop to the net crashing, St. Laurent threw Potter out of the game and gave the Sharks a five minute major power play.

I didn’t think (Potter’s) penalty was necessarily deserved because I thought there was too much contact on our goalie early on,” Gernander said of the call. “Potter’s intention was just to get between our goalie and their player. Losing him was tough, but the rest of the defense stepped up and we got the win.”

But 1:04 after that, Logan Couture made even less of an effort to stop and just barreled into Zaba again. St. Laurent brilliantly assessed him a five minute major for charging, but unlike Potter who was tossed for protecting a teammate, Couture was not tossed for trying to injure an opponent’s netminder.

Zaba made the save of the game with 37.7 seconds remaining in the period when Sharks captain Ryan Vesce had the puck with an open net to Zaba’s left. The Pack netminder had the presence to throw his left leg out to cover the post corner and de
spite numerous whacks by the Shark Right winger held the corner and got the whistle.

The Pack came out quickly in the second as Patrick Rissmiller fed Sanguinetti in the offensive zone and created a mini-breakaway that Greiss turned aside. But the Pack just could not get out of their own way and at 9:51 the Sharks broke through.

Brendan Buckley flipped, what seemed to be a harmless shot on goal from the right point. The shot however bounced and became like a knuckleball that Zaba didn’t handle and it slid through his legs.

It took only 29 seconds for the Sharks to pull within a goal when Andrew Desjardins took a pass from Frazer McLaren and shot from an almost impossible angle from below the low right side and somehow got it to bounce into the net off Zaba.

Both goals came as a result of strong forecheck pressure from the Sharks as the Pack were unable to clear their own zone.

The game tying goal came 4:20 later when a shot from the right side by Riley Armstrong hit Zaba in the right shoulder and bounced into the air. When it came down, it hit Zaba’s right skate and slid over the goal line.  Larose was initially given credit for tapping the puck into the goal but that was changed back to Armstrong.

In the final minute, with Greiss pulled for an extra attacker, predictably St. Lauren called another penalty against the Pack with just 29.9 seconds left giving the Sharks one more try with a six-on-four advantage. Sanguinetti however, picked off a pass and fed a streaking Mark Bell who deposited the puck into the net for a shorthanded empty netter with just 4.6 remaining sealing the deal for the home team. 

Bruce Berlet has the story at Hartfordwolfpack.com.  Believe it or not, the Hartford Courant actually sent someone to the game. Bill Ballou glosses over the shameful and obvious net crashing and overall dirty hockey played all game long by the team he covers and instead blamed the loss on a bad bounce off the post and the 1-13 performance on the power play. The story can be found at Telegram.com. Then in a second article, in yet another of Ballou’s trek down the “what-game-were-you-watching” road, Ballou thinks it “weird” that the Sharks were called for penalties for nearly decapitating Zaba with their incessant crashing the net.

Game Summary and Official Scorers Sheet.

NOTES:

* Tommy Pyatt is back from personal leave and P.A. Parenteau is skating again. Both could be back for Game Three of this series Monday night. Remember that game time is the odd 6:35 start time.

* Howlings list of the Top Three Worst Referees in the AHL: St. Laurent (does nothing right), Jeff Smith (calls nothing), & Jaime Koharski (completely inconsistent). Any challenges to that?

* The previous high for shots allowed in a period was 19 taken against Miika Wiikman on December 5th in Philadelphia. By the way, the Pack also gave up 19 shots in the second period of this game.

* With 44 saves in the game, Zaba also established a new high for the season stopping 10% more than the 40 he stopped in a game at Springfield en route to a 1-0 shutout on January 9th.

* Greiss is 0-5-0-0 in his career playoff starts.

* Here’s one of those scratch your head non-calls. Early in the third period, Anisimov was leaving the ice and straddling the boards heading onto the bench. Shark defenseman Brendan Buckley decided that that would be a good time to put a hit on the Pack center. He threw himself hard at Anisimov’s exposed leg and hit him, fortunately not making full contact, but no call…

LINES:

Byers – Ouellette – Owens

Bell – Rissmiller – Moore ©

Dupont – Anisimov – Weise

DiDiomete – McBride – Crowder

Nightingale -  Fahey @

Urquhart – Sauer

Sanguinetti – Potter @

Zaba

SCRATCHES:

Sugden – Undisclosed – Day-to-day

Denisov – Healthy

Stich – Healthy

Loverock – Healthy

Pyatt – Personal

Parenteau – Concussion – Day-to-Day

Zaborsky – Shoulder – Season

Soryal – Hand – Season

Kundratek – Healthy

Glass – Healthy

THREE STARS:

1. HFD – 46 Jordan Owens
2. HFD – 30 Matt Zaba
3. HFD – 44 Mike Ouellette

ON ICE OFFICIALS:

Francois St. Laurent (38), Referee
Rich Patry (52), Linesman
Luke Galvin (2), Linesman

AHL PLAY OFF BRACKETS

(ALL SERIES ARE BEST OF SEVEN)

PLAYOFF SCHEDULE / RESULTS: