Wolf Pack defeat Falcons

March 12, 2010 - American Hockey League (AHL)
Connecticut Whale News Release


Springfield, MA - Corey Locke had a goal and an assist, and Dane Byers posted two assists, Friday night at the MassMutual Center, as the Hartford Wolf Pack snapped a season-high, seven-game winless streak with a 4-2 victory over the Springfield Falcons.

The Wolf Pack had been 0-3-3-1 in their previous seven games.

Hartford also got goals from P.A. Parenteau, Dale Weise and Brodie Dupont, and Chad Johnson made 22 saves, including a third-period stop on a Liam Reddox penalty shot, ending a personal streak of seven straight losing decisions in the Wolf Pack goal.

Wethersfield, CT native Colin McDonald scored for Springfield, and Slava Trukhno had a third-period power-play goal. Bryan Pitton allowed four goals on 34 shots in the Falcon cage.

Parenteau got the Wolf Pack off to a good start on the game's first shift, scoring at the 57-second mark to give the Pack an early 1-0 lead.

Parenteau cut into the slot from the left-wing side and put a low shot past the stick side of Pitton.

That marked the second straight game in which the Wolf Pack had scored first, after getting the first goal only four times in their previous 20 games.

Dupont made it 2-0 with a power-play goal at 13:23, off of a pass from Byers. Byers slid the puck to Dupont from the left side of the slot, and Dupont beat Pitton from between the hash marks.

The Wolf Pack dominated much of the territorial play in the second period, outshooting the Falcons 15-9, but the two clubs split a pair of goals.

Weise, the Wolf Pack's second-leading goal-scorer, upped Hartford's lead to 3-0 at 7:50, with his 22nd of the season. On a three-on-two break, Weise slid toward the slot from the right side and, using Falcon defenseman Chris Armstrong as a screen, snapped a shot under Pitton's stick-side arm.

Springfield countered that score with a tally at 18:57 by McDonald. After the Wolf Pack failed to get the puck out at the blue line, Rob Hisey stickhandled down left wing and put a sharp-angle shot off of Johnson's pads. McDonald was able to get the first stick on the rebound at the right side of the crease, and banged it in.

Reddox had a chance to bring Springfield to within one at 12:29 of the third period, awarded a penalty shot by referee Joe Sullivan after Reddox was upended on a partial breakaway. After faking Johnson to the ice, however, Reddox put the puck off the side of the net to Johnson's right. The penalty shot was the first faced in the AHL by Johnson, in his 34th appearance of the year.

Locke gave the Wolf Pack a three-goal lead with 3:25 left in the third, getting his 25th of the year off of a fortunate carom. A Wolf Pack dump-in hit an imperfection in the boards behind the net and deflected right in front to Locke. With Pitton having gone behind the net to play the puck, Locke had an open net for the goal.

Trukhno's man-advantage goal cut the Wolf Pack's lead to the final margin of 4-2, but that came with only 21.9 seconds left in the game.

The victory allowed the seventh-place Wolf Pack (27-28-6-5, 65 pts.) to pick up two points on sixth-place Providence, which lost at home to Wilkes-Barre/Scranton, 5-3. Hartford remained six points behind Bridgeport for the final playoff spot in the Eastern Conference, though, as the Sound Tigers beat Norfolk in a shootout on the road, 3-2.

The Wolf Pack start a six-game homestand Saturday night at the XL Center vs. Lowell, with faceoff at 7:00.



American Hockey League Stories from March 12, 2010


The opinions expressed in this release are those of the organization issuing it, and do not necessarily reflect the thoughts or opinions of OurSports Central or its staff.

OurSports Central