Pregame:
There were 26 skaters and 3 goalies on the roster tonight – and that’s after having sent home a whole flock of kids as it became obvious they were going to have to schedule two practices a day just to get everyone on the ice. So, you can say goodbye to any chance of seeing Tallari, Liffiton, Kozak, Keith, King, or Dawes take the ice for the Pack this post season. Whether or not Jonasen or Baranka will be given a shot remains to be seen. For what it’s worth, I didn’t see either of them in the stands tonight.

Not that there weren’t lots of guys in the stands. Layne Ulmer (shoulder), Jayme Filipowicz (same), Chad Wiseman (finger) and Jason MacDonald (knee) are all on the IR, and were joined by Matt Kinch, Martin Grenier, and Brandon Cullen.

Jayme has been out seemingly forever, although he’s been without the sling for weeks now. He’s also interning in the front office to complete his college degree and well, you know, its playoff time, and I’m sure they’re really busy and he wants a good grade…. Chad has a broken finger and is believed to be skating although he did not warm up tonight. Layne apparently has a separated shoulder, particularly frustrating when you recall that he is our main face-off guy and a pure sniper. He got hurt in our last game, 9 days ago, but they didn’t release word of the injury until now.

Jason… who knows. He only played 41 games this year (and he didn’t spend THAT much time up in New York) and whenever he is finally healthy, he gets another nagging, hard to pin down and harder to see injury. Martin Grenier is still suspended for his attack on Brendan Walsh. Dumbass. He’s been a selfish player from day one, just as he was in Springfield. He doesn’t like playing for Hartford? Fine, let him watch the rest of the season then. He can keep MacDonald company; they can both reminisce about how much they preferred their last assignments.

Bobby Andrews hadn’t been seen at games for weeks after taking a puck to the face, but he did make an appearance for awards night. The full beard succeeds only in making him look like an accountant on a two-week fishing trip up north. Phil Osaer was presumably doing color commentary in the booth with Bob Crawford. Matt Kinch, who is not on the clear day roster, did not warm up, although Brandon Cullen did, to no avail.

As a side note – Jozef Balej has his first convert. Juris Stals appeared tonight with white blond hair. It kind of looks like a pelt, actually.

The player who commanded the most attention isn’t even on the roster anymore. Richard Scott was in the house, featuring another frightening hairstyle - kind of a bleached do, but with a longer, died brown stripe down the middle. It is sort of a brown Mohawk attached on top of a fairly normal – for Richard – white blond dye job. Scary enough, but the really alarming part was that he was snuggling, giving a bottle to, and even checking the diapers of a friend’s baby throughout the game. He was babysitting, essentially. But babysitting with tenderness and loving attention that has to be the absolute last thing I ever thought I would see from him. Yikes.

Gametime:
When the game began, these are the lines that McGill rolled:

Gernander – Larose – Balej
Giroux – Moore – Heerema
Murray – Dusablon – Ortmeyer
Lawson – Cuthbert – Stals

Lampman – Nycholat
Tyutin – Pushor
Paul – Weller

LaBarbera

That didn’t work so well. Portland scored twice in 58 seconds in the first period. Just prior to the first goal, the Pirates had succeeded in getting Jason moving side to side on a power play with Heerema in the box. When they finally took the shot, he successfully snagged it out of the air in a nice glove save. What the Pirates did notice, though, was the Pack players standing and watching the puck get moved around them. So they came right back on the next rush and tried it again. With three Pack players (the only one I got a definite ID on was Lawson) collapsed down low, they effectively screened Jason without making any attempt to move the Pirate planted in the paint or break up the pass through the slot. The Pirates had all the time in the world to move the puck around until they got the shot they wanted. Jason never had a chance.

The second goal was bad. Mike Vigilante moved through the left face-off circle, half-heartedly pursued by a Pack player, and as he crossed the goal line about 20 feet from the net, he just threw the puck at Jason along the ice. Jason was standing at the post, and the puck either went between his skates or between his skate and the post. No excuse, really. It remains to be seen whether Valiquette will get the call for game 2 in Hartford tomorrow night.

Cory Larose had a rough night, with a number of his passes finding their way directly onto the sticks of Portland players. As tempers started to flare due to some one-sided referring by Dan O’Rourke, Cory started to take out his frustrations on opponents. At the end of one scuffle, local linesman Marty Demers pinned Cory up against the glass behind the net for a heart to heart conversation. In the stands we could see only Marty’s words, but we could see the back of Cory’s head nodding agreement or understanding as Marty talked. Cory led the team with 6 shots tonight, with only three other forwards (Gernander with 3, Giroux and Moore with 2) having more than one shot – defensemen Fedor Tyutin and Lawrence Nycholat bagged 4 each. Fedor was the only + player on the entire team, due to his secondary assist on the one Pack goal.

As the game wore on, McGill started to shuffle the lines, coming up with two that I particularly liked: a checking line of Gernander – Cuthbert – Ortmeyer and a scoring line of Moore – Larose – Balej. The checking line was outstanding, as all three go full out every second they are on the ice. Kenny, Ryan and Jed give up the body on every shot and throw themselves at opponents every time they can catch them. Of the three, Ryan in particular has wheels, and that makes up for his lack of experience compared to the other two. Weller was also moved back to a forward spot near the end of the game, although I wasn’t able to figure out whether a player had left the bench with an injury or was just being sat. Benoit Dusablon, the Martin Straka of the WolfPack, took a puck off the ear from Jed Ortmeyer early on in his first game back since a concussion. He did continue to make limited appearances throughout the game, though. I don’t remember Lawson getting a lot of ice time, though, so perhaps he sat after his role in the first goal.

The Pack finally did score short-handed with about 4 minutes left in the third, as Tyutin passed to Larose at the blueline, and Cory shot it in. Ouellet dumped the puck, and Balej stepped in and pulled it out of the goalie’s reach with his stick. As Ouellet flung himself to his left in an attempt to grab it, Balej danced around him and showed great patience holding on to the puck until the last second, neatly tucking it into the net behind the prone Ouellet.

Bryce Lampman was in the box for that goal, after interfering with a Pirate in front of the Pack net. The Pirate’s Aulin made a move for Bryce after the play, but was intercepted by Lawrence Nycholat grabbing him firmly by the jaw. Interesting to see Lawrence use the same move my mom used on me when I was a kid.

With about a minute and twenty seconds left in the game and the score at 2-1, McGill pulled Jason – and 17 seconds later Jason Ulmer scored from the Pirate’s zone into the empty net. As the puck slid through center ice, Balej and another pack player gave chase. It quickly became obvious, though, that they had no chance, and Balej threw himself into a full body slide on his stomach from the blueline, eventually crashing into the net and taking it off the moorings – well after the puck had already gone in. Then he laid there for a while, presumably to make sure the photographer got a good shot.

Postgame:
I’m not terribly worried, as I was sure all along that the first game would be a loss for the Pack. They’ve been sitting for a while now, and with 7 guys just back from injuries and a host of others just joining the team – not to mention the departure of many of the kids who were with us at the end of the season – there will be some adjustment. The defense in particular looked confused tonight, often staring at each other with a puck between them like they weren’t sure who was supposed to get it. Pushor and Tyutin both repeatedly got caught chasing the play after straying up behind the opponent’s net to lay on a big hit. I enjoy having Garth Murray on the team and all, but he’s not the guy I want to see trying to break up a 2 on 1 rush on our net.

No, I’m not worried. Right now McGill is yelling and throwing things in the locker room before heading out to the media to vilify Dominic Moore (it’s always Dom’s fault in McGill’s world - I don’t understand why, but that’s the way it is) and perhaps Cory or Alex Giroux. Kenny, Jason and some random kid like Ryan Cuthbert will then make contrite statements to the press as well. After that Kenny, Jed and a few other voices of experience and reason will pull the team together and explain what has to be done tomorrow. Hopefully then the boys go home, get some sleep, and come back to the civic center tomorrow ready to play their game.

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