Phantoms @ Wilkes-Barre/Scranton Penguins 12-30-08: Second Period

The Phantoms got the second period off to a MUCH better start than the first period. Sean Curry, the Phantoms defenseman, scored on John Curry, the Penguins goaltender, to halve the Wilkes-Barre lead to. 2-1.

We had Nate Raduns sent to the sin bin for the Pens' second man advantage of the game. However, approximately a minute into that, the Penguins earned an interference call thanks to some outstanding penalty killing by Jonathan Matsumoto. So we will play for the second half of our penalty at 4-on-4, and then have a short powerplay of our own.

I'm very happy to see Ryan Parent in our lineup. Boy, will he be a godsend to us, particularly with Guenin out of the lineup. LOL, even TYPING his name causes our team to block shots. Syvret and Curry just blocked some shots, just as I was mentioning our injured Shot Blocker Extraordinaire, Mr. Guenin. Good, maybe I'll find a way to drop his name into the recap EVERY time the opposition is creating offense. heh heh heh...

SCOOOORE, Matsumoto ties it for us with 13:32 left in the second period! Niiiice! He shot the puck, it got blocked by a Pens' defenseman, it went right back to Matsumoto and the SECOND attempt he made found the net. NICE play. Bartulis got an assist, but I didn't hear if we had another assist on the goal.

It's not-quite-halfway through regulation time, and it's a whole new hockey game. Nodl takes a nice long shot from the top of the slot, which gets saved and deflected out of play. We have outshot the Pens 7-1 in the first seven minutes of this period. Now THOSE are the stats I enjoy typing up -- keep up the great work, Phantoms! :)

Mr. Ciamaga continues his trend of employing his whistle on a regular basis. Mormina elbowed Ross in the head, and Ross retaliated with a slash. As usual, the ref only saw the retaliation, so the Phantoms will be shorthanded. Oh, for crying sakes, we barely got a shift into the penalty kill, and now we'll be two men down. Matsumoto is going to the box, which rots because he's one of our better PKers. We'll have 5-on-3 for 1:10. MUNROE makes a fantastic save to keep it out at the end of a mad scramble in front of our net -- YEAH, MUNY!

And BOO, REFEREE. He's sending Parent to the box before either of our two penalties has ended. Parent's bleeping penalty can't even start counting down until Ross comes out. I will keep my unvarnished opinions about this to myself, as this IS supposed to be a family-friendly blog. Let's just say that I am singing "The Chicken Dance" to myself, including the lyrics that get added by the Phantoms Phaithful at the Spectrum: "Hey Ref, You S_CK!"

Munroe has been abolutely fantastic during this very, very, very extended two-man disadvantage. FINALLY, we get a guy back, and we will be down only one man for a minute more. The Penguins have gotten ten shots during their PP and the freaking penalties haven't all been served yet. Whoops, let's make that eleven. Munroe has been equal to them all, and we still have 20 more seconds of this to go. Halle-freaking-LUJAH, we survived the Infinite Penalty Kill from H3ll, with 12 saves from Munroe who deserves a star of the game for what he's done in the past few minutes alone.

Ah. I like this better. We're down giving Curry-the-goalie somethng to do. 'Bout time we had the opportunity to do that.

Back we go to the Phantoms' end -- the Pens are fired up from all that PP time, but so is Munroe and he's still making circus saves.

Aw, bloody h... er, I mean Darn it! We got one more scoring chance, but our attempt to center to our players missed everyone and got intercepted, resulting in a rush by the Penguins and another Wilkes-Barre goal. 3-2, Bad Guys and BTW, that "Woo!" stuff ought to be outlawed. If I want to listen to falsetto, I'll put on some vintage Frankie Valli songs.

Yet another PP for the Penguins, now there's a shocker. It'll be their seventh man advantage of the game. Sirianni will sit. Our lines and our special-teams units are somewhat jumbled, as Kane appears to have gotten hurt at some point during the first period and is missing from the lineup. Blah, just what we don't need: one of our top forwards getting banged up. I hope it's nothing major.

Parent blocks a shot -- must be that pair of number 7s on his jersey. (Guenin wears #7.) And now there's a mysterious whistle... aw, for crying sakes. The Phantoms are getting a "Too many men on the ice" call. In the immortal words of Winnie the Pooh, "Bother!"

Nice work by Munroe to make the save and Syvret to clear the rebound well out of harm's way. Here's an interesting stat: before all the powerplays, the Phantoms were outshooting the Penguins in this period 8-1. SINCE the powerplay-fest, the Penguins have outshot the Phantoms 21-0. And we still have half a minute of freaking PK left to go.

Yet again, at the very end of the period, the Penguins are getting penalized, this time, for boarding. We have just over half a minute of time left in the second period. Lets see what comes of it. Boy, are we making good on creating scoring chances! Twice, we took shots on goal and got to the rebound for another attempt, but no dice yet. We have just a bit less than a minute and a half remaining of PP time to start the third period.