Pens Shut Out For Second Straight Game

WBS controls first period but fails to score. Then Sens score fluky goal to start second.

Pens goalie John Curry spreads out as the puck skids past the net in the first period Sunday at the Wachovia Arena.

Pete G. Wilcox/the times leader

WILKES-BARRE TWP. – Maybe the Penguins will score a goal this week.
Then again, they could see Jeff Glass two more times in the next six days, so maybe not.
Glass stopped all 28 shots the Penguins fired his way on Sunday afternoon, including 14 in the first period, and the Binghamton Senators helped Wilkes-Barre/Scranton wrap up an absolutely miserable weekend by blanking the Pens 3-0 at Wachovia Arena.
It was the second time in as many games the Penguins failed to score a goal and the first time in four years that they’d been shut out in back-to-back games.
“Frustration is something we talked about before the game,” said Penguins head coach Todd Richards, whose team was outscored a combined 7-0 by Albany and Binghamton this weekend. “It’s something that’s certainly in our locker room right now. If you go in there you’ll see all the guys, heads slumped over.
“We played pretty well tonight and it’s tough when you play pretty well and lose the game 3-0. We had some good chances, especially in the first period. I know the shots were fairly even but we base it on scoring chances and we outchanced them. Their goaltender won them the game tonight.”
Glass was very good in the first, when the Penguins came at him in waves.
His best stop of the period came early, when he stopped Jeff Taffe on a breakaway less than four minutes in. It was one of four or five first-rate chances for Taffe.
But like Chris Minard, who was the Penguins’ best player in the third, Taffe just couldn’t get one through.
And when the Senators got a fluky goal on a soft wrister through a screen just 22 seconds into the second, the Penguins sort of shut down.
“(Penguins defenseman) Alex Goligoski shoots one and it finds its way through and hits the crossbar. Same shot goes in for them in the second period – goes through eight pairs of legs and over (goalie John) Curry’s shoulder,” said Penguins captain Nathan Smith. “Those are the breaks we’re getting.”
It was B-Sens defenseman Lawrence Nycholat who sent the seemingly harmless floater on goal from the left point that resulted in Binghamton’s first score.
The Penguins never recovered and never looked like the team that had outplayed Binghamton so badly in the first.
“We had great energy and good life and we were all over them,” Richards said. “It’s tough to come out of the (first) period 0-0. I think what really took the air out of our club was that goal to start the second. We worked so hard in the first period. We dominated and controlled. Then a shot from the point that our goalie never sees finds its way through traffic and into the net.
“It’s so demoralizing because it seems like we have to work so, so hard to score goals and here’s one that comes from the point, finds its way through traffic and it’s in the net. Now we’re down and we’re chasing again.”
A mere 7:33 later it was 2-0 when Binghamton’s Denis Hamel scored short-handed on a rocket from the left circle.
The Penguins seemed to wake up a bit in the third. Minard had two or three quality chances.
But the only goal of the period was a Senators empty-netter – scored by forward Justin Mapletoft with 38 seconds to go.
“We’re trying to keep frustration out of the room,” Smith said. “It’s hard when things aren’t going your way, but we know at some point it will. We have a lot of guys in here who can score and right now it’s just not happening.”
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“It’s tough to come out of the (first) period 0-0. I think what really took the air out of our club was that goal to start the second. We worked so hard in the first period. We dominated and controlled.”

Todd Richards

Penguins head coach