VERSUS 
BY: Gerry Cantlon, Howlings
HARTFORD, CT – The Hartford Wolf Pack got a goal and an assist from Chris Bigras on their way to a 4-2 win, holding off a late Bruins rally in their home and regular season opener.
The Pack got off to the quick start and built a 3-0 lead.
“Our start was excellent and our forecheck strong,” head coach Keith McCambridge said. “We created a lot of turnovers. We got on our heels a little bit with penalties, especially consecutive penalties in the second period that hemmed us in our zone a bit and gave back some momentum.”
The Providence Bruins finally broke through for their first goal of the ’18-’19 campaign when they got past the Pack defense in the third with good forechecking while on the PK.
Libor Hajak, who played well in the first half of the game, made a rookie mistake while getting strong pressure from Austin Fyten and while trailing capitalized when Hajak tried to force a pass. Fyten took the puck and snapped a quick wrist shot past Marek Mazanec over his left shoulder 8:19 to give the Bruins some life.
Mark McNeill, an off-season free agent signing by the Baby Bruins, narrowed the lead to 3-2 late when Ryan Fitzgerald, who was at the left point, spotted McNeill off the left post. His pass across went off Hajak’s skate and into the net. Mazanec simply no chance on that one.
“These plays can happen in a course of the season, nobody likes them, and these are situations you learn from,” McCambridge, a former AHL defenseman himself and understands how bounces can happen, said.
The Pack jumped out to an early 2-0 lead on two goals scored 56-seconds apart as the team maintained puck possession for most of the period.
Rookie, Tim Gettinger, planted his 6’6 frame in front of the net to score the season’s first goal. Bigras was at the right point and launched a low wrist shot that he perfectly redirected to the far side of Zane McIntyre at 5:11.
“We had a good first period and got some good jump on them, Bigras said. “We got good energy from the fans.”
Bigras had a strong camp in New York and was paired as he was all pre-season with Hajak.
McIntyre led the AHL in shutouts last year.
“Our defense did a good job of getting into the rush and getting possession at the blue line, and we can do better as a group. I like the way we started. We had some good things to pull from,” said a smiling McCambridge of his defensive corps.
The second goal came just seconds into their first power play of the year taking a short pass from behind the goal line. He swept the puck at McIntyre and it got past him giving the Wolf Pack faithful plenty to cheer about.
“Very smart play by a good player. Really good read to make the play and it went in,” McCambridge said of his newly minted captain getting the red light on.
The Wolf Pack extended their lead with another special team’s goal.
Bigras picked up his second point of the period scoring shorthanded after taking a pass from Steven Fogarty and whistled a shot short-side that eluded McIntrye from the left wing 35 feet out.
Fogarty was strong all night on both sides of the puck.
“Looking at Fogs from his first season to last year to now, being that complete package. He always has had a great stick and was a smart player, reading where the next play is going, very strong game,” McCambridge remarked.
That was all for McIntyre as Bruins head coach, Jay Leach, put in second-year pro, Dan Vladar.
Maintaining puck possession and making the Bruins’ chase them was a departure from last year.
“That was important for us in the first. We did well, but we did get away from things in the second. If we keep that play from the first for the full 60, we’ll do well,” said Bigras.
The Bruins came out hard in the opening minutes of the second period, but Mazanec denied the Bruins attempt to negate the Pack momentum.
Mazanec made two big stops in the first minute-and-a-half. The first classic was a Mazanec diving cross left-to-right to stun Peter Cehlarik, who had his hands raised thinking goal at the 21-second mark,
At 1:28, defenseman Chris Breen put all of his 6’8 frame, into a shot from the left point on net and despite traffic in from Mazanec kept the red from going on.
The Pack had some minor penalty problems, but effective PK work kept the Bruins off the scoreboard. Hajak had two key blocks on back-to-back penalties. First, sent him down to the ice blocked a shot by with the shaft of his stick. Then he dove near the left wing boards to get the puck out of the zone and harms way.
In the third, Marek Mazanec was tested a little in the first making a key stop on a low hard slap shot from the right point by Jakub Zboril with 3:45 left in the period.
NOTES:
The Pack plays Laval on Sunday afternoon at 3 pm with Dustin Tokarski in net.
PACK LINES
Peter Holland-Mikael Lundqvist-Cole Schneider
Lias Andersson-Steven Fogarty-Ryan Gropp
Gabriel Fontaine-Shawn O’Donnell-Shawn Ouellette St. Amant
Tim Gettinger-Ville Meskanen-Bobby Butler
Defense:
Chris Bigras-Libor Hajak
John Gilmour-Ryan Lindgren
Sean Day-Rob O’ Gara
Wolf Pack are now 7-7-1 in home openers and overall 11-10-1
The Pack and Bruins split last season’s series evenly 4-4-1-1 and in the history of this great AHL rivalry, the Pack leads the series 90-66-8-12-8.
The Bruins sent down their first-round pick, defenseman, Urho Vaakanainen, early this afternoon and was in the opening lineup.
A boisterous crowd, but the second lowest opening night crowd in team history with only 6,112 in attendance.
Wolf Pack jerseys of the night; #15 Greg Moore and #44 Mike Ouellette.
