Wilkes Weekly: Getting ready for Hershey

The Wilkes-Barre Penguins went 1-1 last week, here’s Nick Hart from WBSPenguins.com with a recap:

Friday, Nov. 21 – PENGUINS 2 at Hartford 5Wilkes-Barre/Scranton’s sizzling start faded down the stretch, leading to four unanswered goals against. The Penguins were out-shooting the Wolf Pack 26-6S when they built a 2-1 lead on tallies by Owen Pickering and Rafaël Harvey-Pinard. However, Hartford scored twice in the second and third periods.

Saturday, Nov. 22 – PENGUINS 1 at Providence 0The Penguins took back the top spot in the Eastern Conference from the Bruins by shutting them out in a tight-checking affair. Rutger McGroarty scored the night’s only goal while skating shorthanded in the first period. Joel Blomqvist denied all 27 shots faced for the team’s third shutout of the season.

The big, recent news has been the return to action for Joel Blomqvist and Rutger McGroarty, both of whom making their delayed season debuts following injury.

Blomqvist has been spectacular right off the bat; allowing just two goals over the two games he’s played so far this season, including posting the shutout mentioned above against Providence. The Penguins certainly have a ton of riches in net this season within their organization between Blomqvist, Sergei Mursahov and Arturs Silovs all performing exceptionally well.

McGroarty has scored a goal in each game, including this beauty of a shorthanded goal against Providence.

Given that McGroarty didn’t have a preseason and has barely played hockey in the last seven months, patience will be required to get him back up to speed, though he’s showing the signs of readiness.

Across the board, the flow of talent is starting to come back to Wilkes. Harrison Brunicke and Jack St. Ivany are now in town and will be around for the short-term, which forced corresponding moves to assign Finn Harding and Scooter Brinkley to Wheeling and boost the defensive depth chart quite a bit. That’s the positive area, considering many of the AHL team’s top forwards from the beginning of the season (Heinen, Poulin, Koppanen Koivunen) are in Pittsburgh. The list of forward departures grew one larger with the promotion of Tristan Broz to the NHL for the first time.

One area that could help is Philip Tomasino, back in the AHL for the first time since the 2024 Calder Cup playoffs. If Tomasino can match the professional attitude and success of players like Heinen and Ryan Graves that took their demotion in stride without pouting or effecting their game it would be a tremendous boost to a forward group that could badly need it.

That boost will be needed, WBS has a tough week coming up. Tomorrow they play at Hershey, their rival and traditional powerhouse AHL program. Wilkes will be back in Hershey on Saturday, after a quick return home to play Lehigh Valley on Friday night. The Phantoms are off to a strong start as well with an 11-5-1-1 record.

Overall, it’s been a success so far for the Pens’ AHL club, who remain in first place in the Atlantic Division, albeit second in points percentage to Providence. The margin of error at the top is very close, with Lehigh on both team’s heels and those Bears lurking as well. Last year’s Calder Cup runner up, Charlotte, aren’t doing too bad for themselves either to make one heck of a strong top portion of the division. (As a reminder, the top six divisional finishers qualify for the playoffs, with added importance to finish in the top-two and earn a first round bye). It’s never too early to cast an eye towards playoffs, there’s only 72 regular season AHL games – which means WBS’s season will be almost 30% completed after next week’s games are played.