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The final pro hockey game at the Spectrum has been played.

Saturday, November 29, 2008

Phantoms at Hershey 11-29-08; Third Period

A few minutes into the third, we have at least two of our guys in the box back and, in fact, we are on the PP now. Let's see if anything positive comes of it. I realize that it's unlikely that we'll get seven goals in the third period to tie the game, but that doesn't mean we can't play well in the third period and recoup at least some lost dignity.

No luck with the PP, unless you count the fact that a Bear completely missed the fact that he could have fed his teammate coming out of the penalty box for a breakaway.

LOL, I was wondering why the fans were applauding when it didn't seem like anything was happening and it was a faceoff. Turns out a linesman lost his footing and fell, while moving into position. Referee Ryan Fraser gave the linesman the "Safe" signal. :D

Crud. Guenin appears to have gotten banged up on the play behind our net. He got up without seeming to favor anything, but he also went up the tunnel. I hope that's it's nothing serious -- we can't afford to lose him.

Klotz tried to get Reid to fight during the ensuing faceoff. Reid didn't want to, but when the puck dropped, Klotz went after him anyway and knocked him down with a hit to the head. Klotz has 7 minutes' worth of penalties on the board, having gotten the Bettman 17 (2 for instigation, 5 or fighting, 10 minute misconduct). Klotz is done for the night, and Maroon is serviing his penalties Reid, meanwhile, headed up the Bears tunnel with the trainer, so it's possible that whatever Klotz did inflicted some damage.

Can we catch even a SMALL break tonight? For crying out loud! We actually looked like we were about to get into Hershey's zone shorthanded, but the rat fink puck deflected off a linesman and came back out to the neutral zone. The Bears promptly took it and set up shop in our end once again.

OK, the good news is, Guenin is back out on the ice. The bad news is, the Bears just got a PP goal that went in off him. [Insert expletives here.] It was during the 5-minute major, which gets served first, so it didn't take any penalty time off the clock.

There goes the franchise record for most goals-against in a game. 9-0 Bears. I'm getting fed up with this "B-E-A-R-S Bears Bears Bears" chant. Hershey has now scored 9 goals in a game twice in two weeks, having done so vs. Bingo recently.

There are less than 9 minutes remaining in the game, so there's still time for us to put something in the box score other than penalty minutes. Of course, we are being out shot 37-11, which means we have a grand total of ONE shot on goal in this period. Egad.

GEEZE OH MAN. We just spent a good minute hemmed into our zone with a stickless player. Curry was behind our net with the puck, waiting for the team to get set up, and as he was coming out from behind the net, his freaking STICK broke in half. Maroon gave him his own stick and we continued trying to get the puck out... unsuccessfully. Finally, Teslak froze the puck and ended an infinite sequence.

The Phantoms have never lost by a wider margin than six goals, so that record is in jeopardy. We just got our 12th shot, so that record won't be broken. We do need another shot to keep from breaking our "fewest SOG on the road" record. We're unlikely to break the most-PP-goals-against record, which was 7 by Hershey a couple seasons ago. I had to laugh as our announcer decribed that particular game as "the worst-officiated contest in the history of hockey". If you've ever seen a truly, truly bad AHL reffing performance, you'll know that he was unlikely to be exaggerating by much.

Yikes, the Wrong Giroux just took a puck of the helmet (from a teammate's dump-in) and went down. Fortunately, he seems to be OK. While he's a pain in the rear of an opponent, and I don't want him scoring on us, I don't want him in the ER either. I'd like to see him in a Capitals uniform. :D Yeah, that would work for me just fine.

Final minute of the game... we have only seconds to put something constructive on the scoreboard. We actually are set up in the Bears' end, but the Bears are blocking shots like mad because they want to keep the goose egg on the board that we want to remove. The one saving grace is that we did get the 13th SOG, so we only tied our record for fewest road SOG in a game.

Game over. Claude Giroux and Michael Ratchuk somehow managed to break even on +/- in this game. But just as we were getting some other postgame stats from our announcer, the freaking AHLlive site cut the broadcast off. Geesh, can they at least wait until the broadcast is actually done before they throw the "off" switch? GRRR.

Ugh. That was painful. Time for Alka Seltzer. I'll be back with game recaps and the final box score, even though they're both of the "Read 'em and weep" variety, when they become available.

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