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A trend developed for the Wilkes-Barre/Scranton Penguins in their third game of the season.
Facing Lehigh Valley on Oct. 17, the Phantoms scored the first three goals in the opening frame – all within the first five minutes, in a scoring spree that would’ve forced most teams to call it a night.
But not the Penguins.
They responded with an even bigger outburst by scoring five straight goals, including four in the second period, en route to a 6-4 win.
Not only were the Penguins able to move on from a poor period and wipe out a significant lead, but the win at Lehigh Valley came on the heels of a 4-1 loss to Bridgeport.
The Lehigh Valley game wasn’t the first time the Penguins dug themselves out of a hole .
On Oct. 24, the Springfield Falcons led the Penguins all night, and carried a 2-1 advantage into the third period. But in the end, the Penguins recovered for a 3-2 overtime win.
Facing St. John’s on Nov. 6, the Penguins watched the IceCaps take the lead with a first period goal and outshoot them 11-6. From there, however, the Penguins outshot the IceCaps 24-10 and scored the next four goals to win 4-1.
What allows the Penguins to quickly recover from a bad period or bounce back after a loss?
Disappointment.
“Going into every game we expect to win. That’s our mindset in the locker room and we know what we have here,” said veteran defenseman Steve Oleksy. “The disappointment we feel after a bad period or bad game allows us to bounce back and re-focus.”
Head coach Mike Sullivan attributes his team’s resiliency to leadership. Players such as captain Tom Kostopoulos, Kevin Porter, Kael Mouillierat and Oleksy have seen enough hockey to know that a stumble here and there doesn’t mean everything has to unravel.
“We don’t get rattled when things don’t go our way. We just continue to play,” Sullivan said. “For me, our responses to the ebbs and flows, and the adversity, in a season or in a game have been the right kind. That always goes back to the leadership we have in making sure we’re in the right mindset and don’t lose the focus.”
Oleksy said focus and the ability to quickly regain composure was critical to the Penguins’ franchise-record 11-game win streak.
“In this league there’s a very fine line between a winning streak and a losing streak. One turns into two, two into three pretty quickly,” he said. “When you start losing a couple games sometimes you get in a different mindset.”
Perhaps at no other time in the season did the Penguins display the right mindset than in the Nov. 15 game against Hartford. The Penguins had won 10 in a row with the last few victories coming via dominating performances.
But against the Wolf Pack in their building, the Penguins watched Hartford score three times in the first 10 minutes. The Penguins stopped the bleeding with a goal at the midway point to make it 3-1, but Hartford responded with two more goals to gain a commanding 5-1 lead.
And how did the Penguins respond?
They scored five times in the second period and went on to a 7-6 overtime win.
“The reality is things don’t always go your way,” Sullivan said. “Your reaction to those circumstances really define your team.”
That point was driven home again last weekend when the Penguins saw their 11-game win streak snapped with a 3-1 loss in Binghamton, and traveled to Albany the next night and squandered a 3-1 lead by allowing the Devils to score twice in the third period.
Sullivan said his team’s response after that was a defining moment.
After the third Albany goal, a high-energy shift from the line of Josh Archibald-J.S. Dea-Tom Sestito swung the momentum back in the Penguins’ favor. Minutes later, a goal from Scott Wilson and an empty netter from Oskar Sundqvist gave them the win.
“To come out of there with two points was big for us,” Kostopoulos said. “It says a lot about our depth and our character. Everyone’s going to make mistakes, but as a team we’re able to regroup.”