AHL Syracuse Crunch

Crunch Charge Back to Top Penguins

Published on March 6, 2009 under American Hockey League (AHL)
Syracuse Crunch News Release


Syracuse, NY (March 6, 2009) - After falling behind early, the Syracuse Crunch never quit and tallied four unanswered goals to come back and beat the Wilkes-Barre/Scranton Penguins tonight, 4-2, in front of 5,124 fans at the War Memorial at Oncenter.

The Crunch looked to pull even with Wilkes-Barre/Scranton in the final meeting of the season series between these two teams.

However, the Penguins came out flying and out-shot the Crunch by an 11-0 margin within the first six and a half minutes of the game.

Janne Pesonen put Wilkes-Barre/Scranton up 1-0 just 2:17 in when Mark Letestu found him all alone in the slot and he beat Dan LaCosta with a shot low to the stick side and just inside the right post.

Wilkes-Barre/Scranton kept pounding away and went up by a 2-0 count on the power play at the 10:35 mark.

On a perfect tic-tac-toe passing play, Jeff Taffe found Pesonen camped out on the left side of the net for a tap-in goal, his second of the game and 21st of the season.

The Crunch were out-shot 20-12 in the first frame, tying a season-high for shots allowed in a period.

The second stanza boded much better for the Crunch as Derek MacKenzie cut the deficit to 2-1 12 minutes in.

MacKenzie took a pass at the bottom of the left circle from Mike York and let go a sharp-angle wrister that found its way through a screen, off the post and into the back of the net for his team-leading 19th tally of the season.

Syracuse came out on a mission in the third period, scoring twice in the first 2:45 to take a 3-2 lead.

Alexandre Picard got things started when he was in the right place at the right time to cash in on a turnaround slapper from MacKenzie that ricocheted off the back boards and right to the Les Saules, Quebec native just 43 seconds into the period.

Just two minutes later, Tom Sestito used his body to shield the defender down low and slid the puck back to Kyle Wharton at the point.

Wharton's blast was deflected perfectly by Trevor Frischmon through the pads of John Curry to give the Crunch their first lead of the game.

Despite two penalties late in the third, the Crunch dug in and hung on, capping the game with an empty-netter from Mike Blunden with exactly one minute remaining.

CRUNCHABLES: Trevor Frischmon has three goals in his last four games after scoring seven in the first 150 games of his AHL career...Alexandre Picard (4g, 2a) and Mike York (1g, 5a), have both notched six points over their llast four games...Mike Blunden extended his point streak to three games (2g, 1a).

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American Hockey League Stories from March 6, 2009


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