The Babies Thus Far

Each year during my month-long winter break, the Wilkes-Barre/Scranton Penguins have graciously managed to schedule in homestands -- as in I usually get to take in between nine to 11 games during that stretch. It gives me a good enough look at what type of group my #1 team is.

This year the Baby Pens are in the middle of the pack: 42 points in 39 games; good for third in the East Division. They're in a tough position this year because of division re-alignment. In order to make the play-offs they have to not only be in the top four of the East Division, but they also have to be better than the fifth place team in the Atlantic Division. Right now the fifth place team in the Atlantic is Bridgeport with 46 points; the Pens have three games in hand.

The best thing the Baby Pens have right now is their work ethic. Man, they work hard. I love teams like this. It's the type of team that can pull off some surprises in the post-season -- that is, if they can dig deep and find some scoring. These guys outshoot their opponents almost every game, but they cannot finish. Granted they don't have any Chris Minards or Jeff Taffes, but they are getting shots to the net. Their defense is pretty good -- I'd argue Deryk Engelland is the best player on the team right now. Goaltending is a little shakey. There isn't a high confidence level in John Curry or Adam Berkhoel (or the games that Brad Thiessen squeezed in while he was in the Dub-B). But at least they try. The only time I thought they looked lazy was six minutes of a second period against the ridiculously good Hershey Bears. It cost them the game.

So I love this team in terms of how hard they work. I'm always a supporter of the workhorse teams over the skill-based teams (:cough: San Jose :cough:). They're going to have to start generating more offense and allowing fewer goals to really give themselves a chance. Sounds like common sense, I know.


In terms of individual players and who stuck out to me, here are my thoughts:

Eric Tangradi -- What is eating Eric Tangradi? Seriously. People might say I'm being harsh. He's on a point streak afterall. But the only thing that has stuck out about him is his size. Maybe I got caught up in the hype that is Tangradi. He was one of the top players in the OHL and a highly ranked prospect. Getting him in a trade from Anaheim was a big deal. Tangradi currently has 15 points in 31 games (9+6). He was caught off-guard with a shoulder injury at the start of the year, so when I saw himover Thanksgiving break, I gave him the benefit of the doubt. Maybe he was still getting back into the groove of things. A month later it's time to get going. He's a bit slower than I thought he would be (I understand he's bigger so it doesn't look like he's skating as hard. Bottom line is, I don't care how big your strides are. You're either fast or slow.). He hasn't done anything breathtaking on offense. He scored a nice goal or two over the ten or eleven games I saw him. I still have high hopes for him. It very well could be an adjustment thing. Either way, people in Pittsburgh hoping he gets called up are going to be waiting for awhile. He is not ready.

Deryk Engelland -- Best player on the team. I'm making that argument now. I always feel comfortable with him out there. He's created a good reputation for himself by playing well. He's a good D-man who isn't afraid to be aggressive when he needs to be. He just does things that make you go 'Nice. I like that guy.' Class act, and I'm very happy to see how he's turned out.

Brian Strait - Okay so I'm obviously a bit biased towards a BU boy, but Strait's game has transitioned exactly the way I thought it would. Watching Strait for three years at BU, it was easy to see how smart of a defenseman he was. He's not going to score goals for you. Offense is not in his game. But he will always be in position. Plain and simple: he makes smart plays. He doesn't overthink things. He does what he's supposed to. Talk about solid. He has pleasantly surprised a lot of people in his first year pro. Not me. The kid will be just fine in his career.

Dustin Jeffrey -- Second best player on the team. Jeffrey has certainly evolved into an awesome player. He's fifth in the league in scoring with 41 points in 37 games (12 + 29). He's an AHL All-Star starter and deservingly so. The kid's on fire. He can score. He should easily be the next call-up to Pittsburgh should they need a center.

Chris Conner -- So tiny (listed at 5-8"). So fast. Can't finish. That about sums him up -- at least during the December-January stretch I saw him.

Joe Vitale -- The definition of workhorse. The kid battles the entire game. How can you not like him?? He knows his role, and he fills it well.

Tyler Spurgeon -- He found his way back on the Baby Pens' roster this season. Not one of the more talented guys on the team, but he NEVER stops moving. I like that.

John Curry -- It breaks my heart to say I think he can be doing much better. I LOVE Curry. I saw him perform miracles in college. Not to mention he has a GREAT story of being a walk-on at BU and working his way up from third-string to number one. He has two habits that seem to bite him in the ass sometimes: going down too early and playing the puck behind the net when he shouldn't. Don't get me wrong: Curry is not bad. He's just not what he could be. He's sitting on a 2.54 GAA and a .904 save percentage over 31 games. Eh.

Here's to hoping the Baby Pens have a strong second half. If they start getting some more goals, I think they'll be fine. If everything clicks and they get more goals & better goaltending? They can be dangerous. They have some work to do until then.

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Pens Sign Johnson

Pittsburgh went ahead and signed goaltender Brent Johnson to a one-year, one-way contract. Decent signing. The Pens needed a back-up, and he's a back-up. I'm not sure I have much more to say on that front. It's about exciting to me as the headline I went with.

Seth Rorabaugh over at the Post-Gazette mentioned Johnson being "solid insurance should the unproven John Curry not be up to the task of being Fleury's backup next season," but I think the signing counts Curry out altogether. Johnson signed a one-way. I could be wrong, but I'm not sure how good Pitt would feel about paying an NHL contract at the AHL level. No organization is a huge fan of doing that. It's happened before, and it can happen again, but I think Curry is looking at another year in the A. Then again, he has surprised people his whole life. He could have a stellar camp and win the spot.

I like Johnson. Nothing against him. I'm protective over Curry (as you all know already), and I was hoping he'd get a solid chance at the back-up spot next year. But you know what? Another year will be good for him. I actually think it'd be better. He can really fine tune his game and work out some kinks.

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Game Five Awful

Game Five was so bad I had to give myself time before I wrote about it. Seriously. Thinking about it now still makes me cringe. I wish Game Six were being played in five minutes just so we can move on.

Yeah, so Detroit chewed up the Pens and spit them out on Saturday night. The 5-0 score pretty much says it all, but there are a few things I want to touch on:

+ Marc-Andre Fleury. He just wasn't good. I'm not placing all the blame on him because the entire team was just ridiculously bad, but it definitely wasn't his best showing. Bylsma made the right move by pulling him; I might have done it one goal earlier. I'm not worried about the kid though. He's a different kind of 'mental' than most goalies I've met. He'll be fine. One this is certain: he needs to have the game of his life on Tuesday, and should the Pens force it to seven, he needs to have an even bigger one then. If all else fails, put John Curry in. Simeon Varlamov anyone?? ;-)

+ There's been talk about how Detroit is a bunch of old guys who get tired, blah blah. Well, Pittsburgh certainly showed its age by acting like babies on Saturday. They completely lost their heads and took stupid, selfish penalties out of pure frustration. It was like they were looking for the fastest way to dig their own grave. The Pens have my heart, but to see them act like they did is embarrassing. Lock it up boys. No one is going to feel sorry for you if you behave like that.

+ Just a quick comment on the Hossa situation. I'm not angry with him because he took less money to play for Detroit. The big reason this whole saga pisses me off is how he went about it. For one thing, he told Pittsburgh he wanted big money to stick around. So Pittsburgh offered him big money. Oh - then he decides he doesn't want that anymore. But above all, he publicly came out and slapped his former team in the face by literally saying he had a better chance on Detroit. It's like, "Hey, good times guys, but you're not going to win the Cup next year. You're not good enough for me. Okay, thanks. Bye." Maybe he got confused and still thought he was in Atlanta. I mean as you can see, Pittsburgh is a pretty legit team. OH - and then there's that whole loyalty thing that I'm pretty big on. So in any case, it's not that he took less money to go to Detroit. Yes, that's cute. It's just the way he went about it.

So yeah, Saturday night was bad. Really bad. How Pittsburgh responds will be key. They can either use Game 5 as motivation or they can use it as discouragement and watch the Cup slip from their fingers. Going home will give them a big jump, and anything can happen in a Game 7. They need to get their confidence back to where it was in Game 4 -- when you could see that they realized they could beat these guys. And (fingers crossed) if they make it to seven, they will need it more than ever at the Joe. Because believe it or not Pens, you CAN win in Detroit.

Do it.

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The Penguins <3 Hockey East Goalies

Pittsburgh signed Northeastern's Brad Thiessen to a two-year contract today. I didn't really see this one coming, but as a Pens fan, I support it. I've mentioned how much I like Thiessen numerous times. He stood out from the first time I saw him play three years ago. The Hobey Baker finalist's career stats as a Husky were 52-46-12 with a 2.40 GAA, a .922 save percentage and eight shut-outs. I'm really interested to see how his play translates into the pros. To be honest, I don't think finishing his senior year would have hurt him. I don't think he'll have a major problem transitioning, but goalies always take a little more time to mature. One more year would have only helped him develop more.

Northeastern takes a big loss with this signing. I really feel they owed a lot of this season's success to him.

Thiessen will join former Hockey East goaltender, John Curry, in Wilkes-Barre. Does this mean Curry might end up as Pittsburgh's number two next season? Could be. Some scouts in the Pitt system have said he's ready a number of times. Curry played well in the NHL action he saw this season, so maybe it is possible. If not, he could end up mentoring Thiessen in WBS.

And is it just me, or does Pittsburgh just love signing goaltenders as much as possible?

Photo Credit.

Some More Game Notes

+ BU vs. Holy Cross - Before heading back to Pennsylvania, I caught the BU game Tuesday night. My dad and a family friend came in to watch too (since I've been talking up this Terrier squad all year). They had a rougher game than they should have. They ended up winning 3-2, but it was not an easy win. Holy Cross worked their tails off and nearly succeeded in defeating BU. Then again the Crusaders also caught a huge break when their goalie almost put the puck in his own nets from the boards. I'm not sure if BU was still a little bit mentally shaken up from their weekend -- totally possible. The times they played best was when they got into a flow. Vinny Saponari also had two breakaways that he failed to capitalize on.

I think teams are figuring out that if they just find a way to clamp down on the BU offense, they basically take BU's game away. The only problem Holy Cross had with that was that they were so busy playing defense they were limited on some of their offensive chances. Ultimately, Cross wore themselves out. They did a great job though and surprised everyone who was watching that game. It's time for BU to wake up.

+ WBS Penguins vs. Philly Phantoms - I went to my first Baby Pens game last night, and clearly I picked the wrong night to see them. They were owned by the Phantoms 5-1 -- not to mention Philly scored TWO shorthanded goals. Captain Dave Gove said it was the team's worst game all year, and my family assured me they've been playing a lot better during the year. I believe them. I think it was just a bad night, and to be honest they still seemed a little bit tired. They looked pretty good in the first half of the first period, but things just started to unravel. Adam Berkhoel took the loss but also managed to have 40 saves -- a handful there were unreal too. Not his fault at all.

+ John Curry got his first NHL win last night when he came in relief for Dany Sabourin and played solid to get the 5-3 victory over the Islanders. Congrats!!

Defending Brett Bennett .. among other things

I was reading through Boston University's Daily Free Press, and I decided I have to say something about a few issues that were brought up in Mike Lipka's piece.

+ First he says, "I'm pretty sure Wilson is the best all-around forward to play at BU since Chris Drury." This might pan out to be true, but let's not get a head of ourselves. Wilson is unreal, sick, dirty, nasty ... whatever complimentary adjective you want to use here. But like everyone on the Terriers' roster, he can still improve. Let's not inflate the kid's ego more than it already is. He gets to go be Bobby Big Wheels next year when he leaves for the show. Right now he needs to continue to work on being the best player he can at this level.

+ The next thing is probably what set off this whole blog post. It's not Lipka's fault, it's basically everyone's fault at BU who mounted an attack against former goaltender Brett Bennett. If you're just walking into this, Bennett was cut after a mediocre (to say the least) season. He was only a sophomore. I was shocked at the time, but apparently I was one of the few. Lipka mentions the "disastrous Brett Bennett era" ... all of ONE year. The kid wasn't given a chance to even have an era. Without a doubt, Bennett is probably still wishing he had a better season in 07-08, but it's not completely his fault. I still don't think he deserved to be cut (unless something was going on behind the scenes, which is totally possible). So many people at BU who have only jumped into hockey when they came here don't understand this. After watching hockey for how many years now, I have seen my teams have absolutely brutal years -- much worse than BU's last year (which in reality wasn't ALL that bad people). It was a transition year. If anything, you learn from those. Bennett wasn't alone last season ... at the start of the year the offense was horrible and four 'leaders' of the team got suspended by their own coach. There were a lot of problems. When watching Bennett, I never thought to myself "Wow that kid is awful." Because he wasn't. People still had the John Curry (college hockey savior) hangover and expected way more than that team could have produced. Regardless, Bennett was let go; this could be in part to the two excellent freshman goalies coming in (Keiran Millan and Grant Rollheiser) but either way people automatically thought it was because of his year. I didn't like the move; it messed with his future both academically and hockey-wise. Like I said, I don't know the complete story or what the true reason was, but people need to lay off Bennett already. It's over. And as Lipka points out, his numbers with the USHL's Indiana Ice are 8-2-1, 1.88 GAA and .939 save percentage. Good job bud. And good luck.

+ Finally, he mentions John Curry's not-so-good start with WBS. What he doesn't mention is that he is coming off an injury and is still finding his groove. He has some stronger competition in Adam Berkhoel this year (who has three shutouts already), and I think that will make him a better goaltender. In the meantime, he's chillin' in Pittsburgh until Marc-Andre Fleury gets back on the ice from his undisclosed injury.

Ciao! xo

Luongo Gets the 'C'

Roberto Luongo was named captain of the Vancouver Cancucks today ... kind of. I guess he doesn't get to wear the C or anything (something about rules), but technically he is the new captain. John Curry wore an 'A' on his jersey during his senior season at BU. Kind of similar situation.


Photo Credit: Darryl Dyck, Canadian Press.

Cut Time

So Pittsburgh cut another group of guys today. I'm not extremely surprised, but I find some kind of interesting. Here are my thoughts:

+ Ryan Stone and Jonathan Filewich were both cut. Everyone has said about 10,000 times that they really had to step it up this year at camp, and I hate to be the one to reiterate that, but it's true. I guess they didn't. I like the both of them. I think Stone has to play up his agitator side, and I think Filly pretty much always needs someone to set him up to score. They'll be alright in the long run. Just maybe not with Pittsburgh.

+ Kris Beech was also cut, but I don't know that he's even really played in the past, like, ten years (okay, so maybe it was only a year. It feels like ten). So that's really no surprise. Although I realize he can be very lazy, I like him. I hope he puts up points this year in the W-B.

+ The shocker is Paul Bissonnette still remaining in Pittsburgh. No offense Bis. I see potential, but nothing that's ready for the show yet. Maybe he's there because he's tough (or makes an attempt to be anyway).

+ Much love to John Curry who is still up there. I realize it's only because they want to take three goalies to Sweden, but it's still exciting. He stopped all his shots in the preseason game against Tampa Bay last night.

+ With Sergei Gonchar out indefinitely (hopefully not too long), Alex Goligoski will most likely get a chance to show what he's got. He had two assists in a preseason game the other night. Not bad. I still believe he'll be sent down once Pittsburgh has all their D-men at 100%. Who knows though -- maybe he'll tear it up. Time will tell.