BY: Gerry Cantlon, Howlings
HARTFORD, CT – Paul Carey and Jason Zrobil each had a goal and an assist to pace the red-hot Providence Bruins to their 11th straight regulation win and 12th overall in a 3-1 win over the Hartford Wolf Pack before an announced crowd of 2,594.
The Bruins’ win vaulted them over the idle Hershey Bears, into first place in the AHL Atlantic Division with a record of 38-18-3-3 (82 points).
The Wolf Pack, a team being reassembled over the last two days, dropped it’s fifth-in-a-row and fell to fourth place in the AHL Atlantic Division at 31-20-6-5 (73 points).
The Charlotte Checkers’ 3-2 OT win over the Cleveland Monsters put them percentage points ahead of Hartford for third place. The Wolf Pack are seven points ahead of the Wilkes Barre/Scranton Penguins. It put them eight ahead of the Springfield Thunderbirds, who they play again Friday at the Mass Mutual Center.
When it rains it pours.
Pack head coach, Kris Knoblauch, saw his worst come true. Reeling and with three key players suspended and two injured, an injury to New York Rangers’ forward, Filip Chytil, set the stage for the recall of Pack captain, Steven Fogarty, to an emergency recall on Wednesday morning.
Chytil was injured in Tuesday night’s win in Dallas against the Stars.
He was forced to assemble a team that was part-AHL, and part-collegiate. They were held to just one shot in the third period, for just the sixth time in franchise history. The Pack has equaled that dubious total.
Facing a Providence team was already a daunting task. “Providence is the hottest team in the league. To go in shorthanded wasn’t ideal, but our veterans put in the efforts, and our new guys showed some promise. There’s room to grow, but definitely a good start for them. We had a good effort from the new guys, a good first step. We’re gonna have to build on that to play in the American Hockey League,” remarked Knoblauch.
For the players, it wasn’t easy. They need to absorb a number of changes in such a short period of time,
“It’s a good group of guys, but it was like a brand new team. We’ll get some more time under our belt. We’ll figure it out,” Danny O’Regan said.
The line of O’Regan-Vitali Kravtsov-Ryan Gropp was what the Wolf Pack needed to do well in this game and did so scoring the Wolf Pack’s only goal of the night.
O’Regan’s hard work getting the puck from Gropp at the blue and spotted Kravtsov wide-open in front of the net, who deftly redirected the puck just under the crossbar at 3:52 for just his second goal in 15 games.
“It was started with a good pinch by Ebert, and we get a lot more chances when our D is mobile like that. It was a very nice finish by those two (Gropp and Kravtsov),” noted O’Regan.
That was the extent of the offense. There were a few sustained shifts, but clearly the chemistry wasn’t there and that’s to be expected.
The Bruins are high in the standings because of their precision passing and shooting are a potent combo.
Carey fed the puck to Jason Zrobil at the center point of the blue line. He waited until Randy Fitzgerald got a screen on J.F. Berube and drilled his first season past the Pack netminder to restore a 2-1 Bruins lead at 10:35.
The Bruins added another goal to make it a 3-1 lead from yet another break.
Zach Senyshyn was below the goal line and saw Carey coming in through the back-door. He redirected the pass off the leg of Wolf Pack defenseman Darren Raddysh. It went between Berube’s legs as he squeezed the pads, but not tight enough as the puck went over the goal line at 17:52.
The first goal was a bit of a fluke as Carey took the puck off the left-wing boards, near the blue line, off a shot from ex-Pack, Steven Kamper, on a right-wing shot in close that missed the net.
Carey sent the shot toward the net that was deflected off the stick of the Pack’s Brandon Crawley and sailed up and over Berube’s blocker at 15:34.
This will not be the last time these two teams will meet this season.
“We’ve had success against them in the past. We just have to get some chemistry going and get back to doing what we were doing when we were winning,” O’Regan said.
LINES:
O’Regan-Gropp-Kravtsov
Dmowski-McBride-Ronning
Jones-Chase-Newell
Patrick Khodorenko-Michael O’ Leary-Connor Bleackley
LoVerde-Ebert
Hajek-Raddysh
Zach Giutarri-Crawley
SCRATCHES:
Tim Gettinger – Upper-body – Day-To-Day
Boo Nieves – Upper-body – Day-To-Day
Yegor Rykov – (Healthy)
Steven Fogarty – (Emergency recall)
Vinni Lettieri – (Suspended)
Mason Geersten – (Suspended)
Matt Beleskey – (Suspended)
Gabriel Fontaine – Shoulder Surgery – Season-Ending
NOTES:
The Pack has some major scoring slumps and now just five goals in their last five games. O’Regan has one goal in ten games, Kravtsov has one goal in 14. Gropp has just one in ten games while Fogarty has just one in 14.
The only Providence overtime win was against Bridgeport 2-1 on February 9th.
Their last regulation loss was 3-1 on January 31st to the Binghamton Devils.
This was the first of the three-game suspension from Sunday’s first-period melee for Lettieri, Geersten, and Beleskey.
News on Nieves and Gettinger is not good. Neither will be in the lineup this weekend as of today.
Khodorenko wore jersey #43, O’Leary, #23, and Giutarri, #4
The New York Post Larry Brooks reports the Rangers are closing to signing defenseman K’Andre Miller from the University Wisconsin (Big 10) to an entry-level deal. He had 18 points in 36 games on a Badger team that finished 14-20-2. He also was captain for the US WJC Team back in December-January.
Ohio State ended the Badgers season in the opening round of the Big 10 playoffs with a two-game sweep of the best of three series ending a major sub-par season for the Tony Granato coached team.
A big shout-out and offer for prayers to Chief-Of-Off-Ice officials, Dave Cunningham, who is recovering well in Hartford Hospital after suffering a stroke on Saturday at the XL Center after the game.
