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Wilkes-Barre\/Scranton players scuffle with Wolf Pack players during the Penguins\u2019 home opener Saturday. (JASON ARDAN \/ STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER)<\/p>\nWilkes-Barre\/Scranton players scuffle with Wolf Pack players during the Penguins\u2019 home opener Saturday. (JASON ARDAN \/ STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER)<\/p>\n
WILKES-BARRE \u2013 The Wilkes-Barre\/Scranton Penguins (4-0-0) added two more regulation wins last weekend to push their season-opening win streak to four games after a successful road trip in Connecticut.<\/p>\n
It marks the fourth time in franchise history the Penguins opened the season with four wins, and the first time since the 2013-14 season when the team started the season with six straight wins.<\/p>\n
Friday \u2014 Penguins 5, Hartford 2: The Penguins jumped out to a 2-0 first-period lead on goals from Rafael Harvey-Pinard and Atley Calvery and extended their lead to 3-0 in the middle frame on a power play tally from Avery Hayes.\u00a0Hartford tallied back-to-back goals late in the second period and early in the third period to make it a one-goal game in the final 13:10 of the third period.\u00a0Calvert tallied his second of the contest on a rebound in front with 8:07 left to play to restore the Penguins\u2019 two-goal lead, and Tristan Broz sealed the win with a shorthanded empty net goal to complete the final score.<\/p>\n
Saturday \u2014 Penguins 6, Bridgeport 3: Bridgeport pounced on the Penguins in the first period to the tune of three goals in the opening 9:46. Ryan Graves tallied his first goal in a Penguins\u2019 uniform late in the second period to draw within two goals before the offense exploded in the third period. Danton Heinen led the way with a goal and two assists, while the Penguins also got tallies from Harvey-Pinard, Sam Poulin, Ville Koivunen and Atley Calvert on their way to blowing the game open in a five-goal final frame.<\/p>\n
News & notes<\/p>\n
Forward Danton Heinen leads the Penguins with seven points (one goal, six assists) and recorded at least one point in the each of the last three games. Heinen\u2019s six assists are tied for most in the AHL while his seven points are tied for the second-most leaguewide.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ve had some lucky balances. It\u2019s just some good plays by some good players, and just like (I\u2019m) kind of the beneficiary of it,\u201d Heinen said. \u201cI don\u2019t feel like I\u2019ve created a whole lot. So yeah, it\u2019s a few lucky ones but yeah, I think as a team, we\u2019re just trying to kind of work on that, creating that offense.\u201d<\/p>\n
Forwards Tristan Broz (three goals, one assist) and Atley Calvert (three goals) have a share of the team\u2019s lead in goals, while 11 skaters have at least one goal through the opening four games.<\/p>\n
The Penguins have allowed just seven goals. MacDonald attributes that success defensively to one specific area of the game he thinks the team has improved upon as compared to last season.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019ve made it really hard for teams to attack. I think one great improvement we\u2019ve made over last season is our ability to defend the net front,\u201d MacDonald said. \u201cWe are way harder around there. We\u2019ve been way harder around both net fronts early in the year, I would say which, at the end of the day, (if) you want to win games, you have to win that area around the blue paint on both sides of the puck. And credit to our guys that we\u2019ve done a really good job with it thus far.\u201d<\/p>\n
It\u2019s only two weeks into the season, but the early returns are positive for the Penguins, who according to MacDonald have been largely consistent to start the year.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think we\u2019ve done a lot of really good stuff. I would say there\u2019s only really two periods I haven\u2019t liked at all. And that was the first period on Saturday (against Bridgeport), and the first period last week against Hartford (in) the home opener,\u201d MacDonald said Monday. \u201cI think other than that, we\u2019ve done a really good job controlling pace, controlling the game (and)playing on top of people.\u201d<\/p>\n
Week ahead<\/p>\n
The Penguins have their first three-game week of the season, beginning Wednesday at home against Lehigh Valley at 7:05 p.m. before heading to Charlotte for games Friday (7 p.m.) and Saturday (6) against the Checkers.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Wilkes-Barre\/Scranton players scuffle with Wolf Pack players during the Penguins\u2019 home opener Saturday. (JASON ARDAN \/ STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER)…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":10686,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[1902,178,180,179,726],"class_list":{"0":"post-10685","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-scranton","8":"tag-penguins","9":"tag-scranton","10":"tag-scranton-headlines","11":"tag-scranton-news","12":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10685","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10685"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10685\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10686"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10685"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10685"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10685"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}