Phantoms vs. Manchester Monarchs 1-23-09: Second Period

At the start of the second period, an assist was added to the second Phantoms goal. Rob Sirianni is now credited with the secondary assist.

The description that I got, from someone who was watchng the game on TV, is that Klotz was hit with 2 or 3 rights and dropped, and may also have hit his head on the boards as he fell. I just hope that the precautions they took getting him off the ice were more of the "better safe than sorry" variety. Don't these boys know that they're not allowed to alarm us ike that? :( I hope he's OK.

So far in this period, there's been a lot of back-and-forth, but not many SOG to show for it. Five minutes into the period, both teams only have garnered two shots apiece.

Laliberte just nailed Crosty with a nice hit in the corner, to the Manchester goalie's left. THAT got the crowd applauding. :)

Maroon's parked in the tunnel, taking his skate off for some work, with 13:48 left. There appears to be a TV timeout, so that buys our equipment guys time to work on whatever they need to do. Oh, and there goes Matsumoto UP the tunnel while adjusting some of HIS gear. Dang, what's the deal with everybody's darn gear acting up at once? AT least Matsuoto and Maroon are on the same line, so Paddock won't have to get too crazy mixing and matching forwards for the next few minutes. Less than a minute's worth of game time later, Matsumoto is back on the bench and Maroon is putting his skate back on so all is well.

Crikey, now it's ROSS going up the tunnel for gear-related reasons. My gosh. It's the Revolt of the Inanimate Objects. Fortunately, he didn't need long to fix or adjust whatever caused the problem.

With 9:11 left in the period, Clackson just had a brief fight with Boyle. Dagnab, how tall IS Boyle? Clackson gave up a noticeable amount of height and reach in this bout. Once again, the sparring took place right in front of the Monarchs bench, so I saw preciious little of it. But both guys headed to the sin bin and they look relatively intact. Good. I like a good rumble as much as the next fan, but I could live without ever seeing another ambulance in a Zamboni tunnel, ever, anywhere, anytime.

It's been a relatively low penalty count in this game, but Manchester just took one for interference.PECOOOO POWER PLAY time for the Phantoms. Ross, Maroon, Laliberte, DeSantis, and Syvret are on the ice. Ross is buzzing around the net with the puck. We seem to be stationing someone BEHIND the net now and then, whidh is a tactic I don't recall having seen before. AAA, and it nearly worked, as we have Laliberte parked in the slot for a PERFECT shot on goal, once our guy behind the net got the puck to him. But the goalie made the save, and a Monarchs Dman cleared the rebound. It was a nice sequence, though, and I can see it succeeding if we do it often enough.

Aw, bleep. There goes the PP. Nodl goes for elbowing with 21 seconds left in the man advantage, so we wil have a brief period fo 4 on 4 followed by a PK.

Ross, Sirianni, Raduns, and Syvret are on the ice (three forwards and one D). The next PK unit was the more traditional two forwards/two D: Matsumoto, Laliberte, Bartulis, Curry. We killed the penalty successfully.

I'm just realizing how little we have seen of Beaulieu in this game so far. The last I heard, he's not cleared to fight yet, but I"m wondering with the limited amount of ice time he's getting how healthy he is. I know that Paddock tends to roll three lines and use the fourth line sparingly, but one would think that if we've got a shortened roster, we'd see a little more of the fourth-liners to compensate.

Drat. With 3:06 left in the period, freaking Manchester scored. There goes the shutout. It's what happens when we get stuck in our end. However, we still have a one-goal lead. We will just have to get the heck OUT of our end and bust our tails to get that goal back. The fact that we are currently being outshot 25-15 tells the tale of which end we are spending more time in. We've had six SOG so far in the second period, compared to 14 for the Monarchs. Since we have not had a parade to the sin bin, much of that has come while the teams were at even strength.

I wish the Flyers had thought to sed Giroux down for the duration of the NHL All-Star Break. Not only would he be able to participate in the AHL All Star game, in which he was named to the starting lineup, but he would be helping the Phantoms tonight and tomorrow night into the bargain.

Failng that, I would love to see guys who were called up to the Flyers, then got injured (Gratton and Kalinski), recover and return to the Phantoms lineup. I think we would be spending less time in our own zone if we had those players back on our roster.

Anyway, at the end of the second period, the SOG totals are Phantoms 16, Monarchs 27. The score is 2-1, Phantoms.