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HERSHEY — Long before the puck dropped for Saturday’s game against the Hershey Bears, the Wilkes-Barre/Scranton Penguins faced a bigger opponent: history.
Coming into the contest, the Penguins were 0-4 in their first game back from Christmas break and have been outscored 14-1.
The Bears extended the streak to five.
Hershey struck twice in the first two minutes and the Penguins couldn’t recover, losing 5-0 in Clark Donatelli’s first game behind the bench. The loss drops the Penguins to 0-5 in their first game back from Christmas break, and they’ve been outscored 19-1 over that span.
But Donatelli wasn’t using the break as an excuse, even though he admitted the week off may have had an impact.
“It sure looked like it. I don’t think it was an X and O thing, we just weren’t ready to play coming off break,” Donatelli said. “That’s not an excuse. We’re professionals and we have to take care of our job. We just didn’t do it tonight.”
Donatelli pointed the blame to the Penguins inability to change the momentum after Hershey struck twice in the opening minutes, and he said the coverage in the defensive zone needs to improve.
But the Penguins were dealing with a lot more coming into the game. They played a game for the third time with a new head coach behind the bench this season, didn’t get to practice coming off the break and skated with a lineup missing several regulars.
And in goal, the tandem of Matt Murray (Pittsburgh) and Tristan Jarry (injury) was replaced with the duo from Wheeling in Brian Foster (21 AHL games) and Casey DeSmith, whose pro career consisted of two games with the Nailers this season.
“We just weren’t all on the same page out there tonight,” center Carter Rowney said. “When we tried to make something better it just kind of snowballed back against us. We kept shooting ourselves int he foot.”
Hershey got to it right away with a goal by Aaron Ness just 34 seconds into the game. Chris Brown scored less than a minute later and Hershey added another tally at the midway point to take a commanding 3-0 first period lead at the Giant Center.
The Penguins, meanwhile, struggled to get going, generating just one shot in the first 13 minutes of the period.
“Coming to Hershey and going down 2-0 that fast, it’s kind of a tough barn to get things going,” Rowney said.
In the second period, the Penguins limited the Bears’ shots to just six, but gave up two more goals – a power play tally to Paul Carey at 10:22 and a shot from the high slot by Erik Burgdoerfer a minute later to fall behind 5-0.
Donatelli pulled Foster to put DeSmith in net to start the third, and the rookie was able to stop all seven shots he faced to prevent Hershey from extending its lead.
But the Penguins were unable to regroup and mount a comeback.
Donatelli said there were a number of things the Penguins could’ve done better throughout the game.
“We lost too many one-on-one battles,” he said. “They get two quick goals and it’s hard for us to recover. We’ve got to learn to change the momentum. We just didn’t have it tonight for whatever reason.”
Still, Donatelli is hoping his team gets it pretty quickly as the Penguins jump right back at it with a home game on Sunday against Lehigh Valley.
“This one’s in the history book. Wasn’t a very good game at all,” Donatelli said. “This one we can’t do anything about but learn from it.”
NOTES
– D Harrison Ruopp, C Matia Marcantuoni, G Tristan Jarry (injury), F Tyler Biggs (injury), F Tom Sestito (injury), D Steve Oleksy (injury) and D Barry Goers (injury) were scratched for the Penguins.
– Donatelli didn’t have any updates on any of his injured players after the game.
– The Penguins only experience working with Donatelli was during a brief morning skate on Saturday before departing for Hershey.