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The Wilkes-Barre/Scranton Penguins were back at work with another fast-paced practice at the Toyota Sportsplex on Thursday morning to get ready for games against Lehigh Valley and Albany.
After getting off to a red-hot start at 16-2-0-0, as well as setting new franchise records with an 11-game winning streak overall and a 10-game home winning streak, the Penguins were in the position of dealing with adversity this week coming off of a tough weekend where they lost three consecutive games. The Pens were only able to muster one goal in each of the three losses before getting back on track with a win over Syracuse.
Penguins top-scoring forward Scott Wilson also believes that the team showing resiliency and getting back to their winning ways mid-week was integral to the team and could be a positive catalyst going into this weekend’s games.
“I think anytime you go through a long stretch of wins it’s going to end somewhere,” Wilson said. “So we are glad to get the losing skid out of the way and just continue the next streak here.
“I think anytime you run into a hot goalie (like the Phantoms’ Anthony Stolarz) it’s tough, but you got to find a way and last week I think we didn’t really do that, so we are looking forward to Friday to do that.”
The Penguins (17-5-0), who still sit atop the Atlantic Division and the overall Eastern Conference standings, are paced offensively by Wilson, who has 11 goals. Dominik Simon, Conor Sheary and veteran team captain Tom Kostopoulos have also contributed to the team. Sheary has been on fire lately scoring four goals in his last six games and leads the team in points with 22. Simon, with his two goals in Wednesday night’s victory, now has nine on the season and his 21 points are tied for third among AHL rookies.
Dominik Uher scored his first goal of the season on Wednesday night and could be ready to take off offensively this weekend. He has a steady track record in his previous AHL seasons and last season scored a career-high 13 goals and 26 points.
First up this weekend for WBS is Lehigh Valley at PPL Center in Allentown on Friday. At 12-12-1-0, the Phantoms are in fourth place in the Atlantic division standings and ninth in the Eastern Conference.
Just last week, the Phantoms handed the Penguins their first home loss of the season. Stolarz was on top of his game stopping all but one of the 36 shots he faced. He’s been tough all season going 10-5-1 in 17 games with a 1.84 goals against average.
“He was good, he had a solid game,” Pens coach Mike Sullivan said. “I think we certainly could have done a better job in terms of making things difficult for him by getting more people in front of him, limit his sight lines and maybe limit his movement a little bit. That’s an area we discussed over the weekend in terms of trying to convert on some of the opportunities we have in front of the net. So that’s an area I think we can improve, but you have to tip your cap to him, he played a solid game for them.”
Offensively, the Phantoms have some notable scoring threats in forward Petr Straka who leads the team with 15 goals, and center Nick Cousins who has a team-leading 20 points.
The Penguins return home Saturday night to face the Devils, who are currently in third place in the conference standings and second in the North Division. Albany is another team with a talented starting goalie. Yann Danis, in 19 games played, is off to a 14-2-3 start with four shutouts and a 1.67 goals against average. Mike Sislo leads the team with 13 goals and 22 points this season, while Reid Boucher has 10 goals.
After getting back in the win column on Wednesday night, Sullivan is confident that the his team will be ready for the weekend.
“I said earlier in the week, I’m glad we got a chance to play mid-week. No one wants to sit on a weekend where you don’t have success,” he said. “You want to get back at it and get back into the fight.”