“It seems to be the same ol’ song and dance,” Stephon Williams said after once again giving up just one goal too many, who has had a couple of rough nights but has also been in net when the Sound Tigers have been shut out, now, twice while he gave up one, and when they scored one while he gave up two.
“That’s what adversity is. It (stinks). All that you can do is just go out and give the guys a chance to win. Whether that’s every night, every other night, once every two weeks,” Williams said, “when I hear my name called, I’ve got to be ready to go.”
He couldn’t have done much more Saturday. He made 29 saves. The game was entertaining. The goal was a funky one.
“I’ve been working (hard) to get better at certain things, and to see it show is good,” Williams said.
The Sound Tigers were going to need one goal at some point, and it never came, on 24 shots.
“We had some issues generating offense. We’ve got to shoot more, get pucks to the net, get net-front presence,” Brent Thompson said. “We looked pass-first, shoot-second.”
That wasn’t so much something he’d been seeing, Thompson said, but a lot of what Wilkes-Barre did, defending well, and getting 24 saves from Tristan Jarry.
“We battled the entire game,” Thompson said. “It was a very tight game. They competed hard. The flow was really good both ways.
“If we play that hard every night,” he said, “I think we’ll like our results.”
……
The Penguins had been in an 0-for-28 funk on the power play before that goal, which came with one second left in Ben Holmstrom’s penalty. It’s maybe cruel irony, or maybe just fun how involved Jean-Sebastien Dea was in all that happened in that five-plus-minute stretch. Holmstrom hits Thomas Di Pauli, Dea goes back at him: no penalty to Dea. Dea runs into Williams, Burroughs fights him: Burroughs is done for the night. In between, Dea scores the only goal, knocking the puck out of midair.
That sets in motion an interesting little conundrum. Thompson said he wishes the officials had talked more about whether Dea deflected in the puck with a high stick. The officials, Thompson said, said Dea didn’t touch it. The goal got credited to Tom Kostopoulos. After the game, the credit is changed to Dea. Too late to matter, but OK, was it a high stick? They showed a replay in-house from a lower angle than the center-ice camera, and I wasn’t 100 percent sure on that first viewing where the tip happened. On the center-ice camera, checking back on AHL Live, if the deflection happens where I think it did, it’s probably a good goal. But that lower-angle replay isn’t on the archived feed; the screen goes black.
Thompson said they reminded him that going to video review to check a high-stick redirect isn’t allowed. That makes sense: The only allowable angle from which to check is directly over the net, so you’d have to triangulate with another video feed to check it. I’d still love to give the referee at least an AHL Live feed to give him a second angle. The evidence has to be conclusive anyway, so why not use whatever’s available, even if availability is inconsistent? But anyway.
Neglected to mention Wednesday: The game at Hartford was only the second time in, now, 18 games this season they received more power plays than their opponents. There were two even.
Big win for Sacred Heart at UConn, back from 2-0 down early.
Prescout. It was River Rats throwback night, and it was glorious. Rick Kowalsky even called his team the River Rats on his lineup card.
Steve Oleksy got in the lineup for Pittsburgh tonight. Not a bad list to join, if only for a night.
Brett Gallant has himself a scoring streak.
Binghamton’s Nick Paul took a skate to the wrist tonight; Kurt Kleinendorst told the media there that Paul will be all right, thankfully.
Fidel Castro is dead. A momentary respite from all the sad celebrity deaths.
And RIP, Ron Glass.