BY: Gerry Cantlon, Howlings
HARTFORD, CT – The Hartford Wolf Pack home schedule mercifully came to an end, but in a way that was hardly surprising.
Mike Sgarbossa’s three points and two goals from Steve Whitney, and Nathan Walker allowed the Hershey Bears to beat the Wolf Pack 6-3. Hershey has won five of the six games against the Pack this season and will play the regular season final game on Sunday at 5:00 pm when they travel to Allentown, PA to play Lehigh Valley on Saturday night.
The Pack’s home record for the season was 17-15-5-1. The only record that was in the black. The rest were all in the red.
The Pack made it close at 5-3 in the third period, but as was the case, as it has been all season, the Bears answered right back as they did all night.
At 1:42, one of the new Pack players, rookie Jake Elmer, who factored in all three Wolf Pack goals, opened on the right wing and took a beautiful pass from Patrick Newell from the left wing and seemed like the Pack had some gas left in the tank.
“I haven’t been here long, but it’s been fun, guys are super good. I try to use my speed, play fast, use my strengths and bring it every shift. It wasn’t the result we wanted tonight. They’re a good team, they made us pay for our mistakes. If we played our game, it would have been a different game.” remarked Elmer.
The Pack on the next two shifts put strong pressure on Hershey with Elmer just missing a hat trick and cutting the lead to one goal, but Hershey snuffed out any third-period miracles quickly.
A gorgeous tic-tac-toe scoring sequence started as ex-Pack, Jayson Megna, took a pass and fed another ex-Pack, Ryan Sproul, who, a right-handed shot, was on the left wing put one past Adam Huska who came in relief of Brandon Halverson.
“I thought our youth gave us lots of energy, lots of chances, but you give a team like that time and space, they’ll take advantage of it.” Wolf Pack head coach Keith McCambridge said
Hershey picked up where they left off from the first period scoring to extend their lead to 4-1 in the second.
Former Yale Bulldog Joe Snively was behind the net and sent the puck to Sgarbossa at the right side of the net. He turned and zipped a pass across the crease to Steve Whitney, a right hand shot on the left wing and he easily buried his second of the game and ninth of the season at 7:42.
Then there were some fireworks at the 8:41 mark.
Hershey’s Liam O’Brien left the Hershey bench for his shift and raced about a 100 feet and charged defenseman Ryan Lindgren knocking him silly leaving him in a heap in the left wing circle.
Brendan Crawley immediately came to his aid and dropped the mitts and the two had a serious bout. Give O’Brien, a seasoned fighter the edge with Crawley landing the last good punch, an overhand right.
Then as O’Brien was being escorted off the ice he was hit with a double major for charging and fighting and a game misconduct for the charge. Lindgren rose to his feet and went to make a move at O’Brien with the team trainer holding him back with the second linesman late in arriving.
Lindgren did not return to action.
The Pack responded on the O’Brien three-minute major power play as Elmer made a great dipsy-doodle move around Bears defenseman Sproul, made a backhanded shot as he cruised in front of the Hershey net. Ville Meskanen was right in front and swatted the puck on the backhand at the top of the crease area and tallied his 12th of the season at 13:03.
It was his first goal in eight games and second in 14 games.
The Bears got back their three goal lead on the shiftiness of Nathan Walker.
After a center ice turnover by Gabriel Fontaine, Walker came up the right wing boards and reversed on Sean Day, who was way up high and sped past him. His backhander went off the skates on Darren Raddysh and past Halverson, who was too deep in the net. It was Walker’s 16th and McCambridge had seen enough and pulled Halverson in favor of Huska
“I thought Halverson has played better and this wasn’t one of his better efforts,” said McCambridge.
His feelings were echoed by Steven Fogarty in a flat monotone voice that spoke loudest.
“We did some good things, but clearly we didn’t do enough against a really talented team who we know what there like. When you cheat on doing things this is what happens to you.”
No surprise the Wolf Pack opponent scored first.
Hershey’s Connor Hobbs put the shot on net and Sgarbossa was tied up with Lindgren in front of Halverson who made the save, but Whitney snagged the loose puck and put his eighth of the season into the net at 6:51.
The Pack responded just nine seconds later to tie the game.
A simple dump into the right wing corner saw Elmer track it down at the goal line. From a very sharp angle, Elmer fired a shot at the net and amazingly went over the shoulder shortside of Vitek Vanacek to the far side of the net for his first professional goal.
Hershey regained the lead just nine seconds into their first powerplay.
Jayson Megna cleanly won the draw from Fogarty and got the puck back to NHL vet Devante Smith-Pelly passed the puck put it back to Aaron Ness at the right point. He caught Sgarbossa in full stride coming of the left point and he wired his 30th of the season over Halverson’s blocker pad at 9:18.
Hershey followed the power play to go to 3-1 just 23 seconds into the man advantage.
Once again, Ness chasing John Gilmour in the AHL defenseman scoring race was a factor on the goal-taking pass at the left point from Sgarbossa and then Ness zipping a perfect pass to Nathan Walker who redirected his 15th of the season into the right side of the net over Halverson’s glove hand as he easily evaded the checking of Raddysh at 14:12.
“We didn’t play very well, especially in the first period, Well we got crunch this one out of the system and focus on the next two nights we don’t wanna go home with a sour taste in our mouth,” remarked Gilmour.
SCRATCHES:
Shawn O’Donnell, (Healthy)
Bobby Butler, (Healthy)
Julius Bergman, (Healthy)
Shawn St. Amant, (Healthy)
Matt Beleskey, (Lower Body, Season Over)
Dawson Leedahl, (Upper Body, Season Over)
Chris Bigras (Ankle, Season Over)
PACK LINES:
Fontaine-Meskanen-Gettinger
Fogarty-Lettieri-Gropp
Dmowksi-Jones-Elmer
McBride-Newell-Zerter-Gossage
Lindgren-Gilmour
Raddysh-Day
Crawley-Wesley
TEAM AWARDS
Hartford Wolf Pack Booster Club Awards were announced in a pre-game ceremony
The Unsung Hero Award winner was Gabriel Fontaine, who won the media’s Unsung Hero last year. The fan Favorite was Ryan Lindgren, and Steven Fogarty won their MVP award.
The media’s Unsung Hero winner was a defenseman, Ryan Lindgren.
The Mary Lynn Gorman Community Service Award: John Gilmour
Bob Girourard Award Winner: Steven Fogarty
Team MVP as selected by the Players: Steven Fogarty
NOTES:
New York Rangers GM, Jeff Gorton, was in attendance for the game. He couldn’t be happy with the display of his organization’s depth.
Adam Huska will start tomorrow in Lehigh Valley, who has crept to within two points of Providence for the fourth and final Atlantic Division playoff spot.
Lindgren will stay back in Hartford in a precautionary move with what appears to be a concussion.
Liam O’Brien will be facing an AHL suspension and miss some time in the first round of the Calder Cup playoffs.
The crowd was a healthy 5,135, but the 38 game home schedule saw another statistic that wasn’t good. The Wolf Pack finished with 3,942 in average attendance. The first time the team has fallen below 4,000 in average attendance for the first time in 22 seasons.
In terms of numbers, they had two crowds over 7,000, only one over 6,000 and four over 5,000. The season’s best single-game attendance was 8,608 against the Providence Bruins on February 23rd.
Wolf Pack fan jersey’s of the night #39 Dan Cloutier, #5 Dale Purinton, #46 Jordan Owens and an oldie #7 Joe Rullier.
The last National Anthem of the season was sung beautifully by the Traveler’s choir.
