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WILKES-BARRE TWP. — Wilkes-Barre/Scranton Penguins head coach Mike Sullivan doesn’t have a lot to say about his team’s winning streak.
But he’s plenty talkative when it comes to what the Penguins are doing right. The Penguins closed out their seven-game home stand on Saturday with a 3-1 win over the Rochester Americans, extending their win streak to 10 games to set a new franchise record.
When asked what he thought about the record-setting streak, Sullivan said “I have no thoughts.”
But he did talk freely about what’s going right for the team that, at 11-1-0-0, has the best record in the AHL.
“We defend well, we pay attention to details and we have a disciplined group,” Sullivan said. “When the game doesn’t go our way with the score, this group has a maturity level that we’re able to maintain our focus and we don’t go off on tangents.
“Guys stick to the game plan.”
Facing a goaltender that allowed 15 goals in his three starts this season, the Penguins had some difficulty getting pucks past Rochester netminder Andrey Makarov for the first half of the game.
But they didn’t have a problem peppering Makarov with shots, out-shooting Rochester 27-7 while the game still remained scoreless.
As Sullivan alluded to, the Penguins stuck to the game plan and kept their focus.
“At that point we were getting pucks to the net,” defenseman David Warsofsky said. “You just stick with the program and can’t get frustrated.”
Jean-Sebastien Dea got the crucial first goal when he sent a wrister in from the high slot that glanced off Makarov’s glove for a 1-0 lead in the second period.
The goal was Dea’s third in his last four games.
Rochester did the Penguins a favor later in the period by taking two penalties to put the league’s top power play on the ice. The Penguins’ power play came through late in the second period when Warsofsky snuck a shot through a defenseman and past Makarov to make it 2-0.
The Penguins carried the two-goal lead and a 32-8 shot advantage into the third period.
“We didn’t want to stop,” Warsofsky said. “We didn’t want to let up and let them back into the game. We have a lot of confidence that we know how to put a team away.”
The Penguins controlled the final period while maintaining their 2-0 lead until Rochester’s Phil Varone connected on a breakaway with 19 seconds left to cut the lead to one.
The goal ruined rookie Tristan Jarry’s bid for his first AHL shutout. He stopped 15 of 16 shots in the night.
“I was disappointed for Tristan,” Sullivan said. “It presents a very difficult challenge for a goalie when they don’t see a lot of pucks. Tristan did a real good job of staying locked in.”
Varone’s goal proved to be a short-lived scare, however, as Oskar Sundqvist sent a puck into the empty net just seconds later to seal the 3-1 win.
With a game in Hartford on Sunday to wrap up the three-in-three, the Penguins are thinking about one thing, and it’s not the winning streak.
“We want to win each game as it comes,” Sullivan said. “We’re not looking to get ahead of ourselves and look beyond any one game. That’s going to be our mantra all year with these guys.”
NOTES
– C Matia Marcantuoni (injury), F Tom Sestito (injury), D Barry Goers (injury), D Reid McNeill and F Tyler Biggs were scratched for the Penguins.
