The Wilkes-Barre\/Scranton Penguins look to keep their season-opening win streak alive and continue their strong play through the final week of October when they host Providence on Wednesday at 7:05 p.m.<\/p>\n
It is a matchup of the two remaining unbeaten teams in AHL\u2019s Eastern Conference. The Penguins are 7-0-0 while the Bruins are 6-0-0.<\/p>\n
The Penguins best start to a season was 9-0-0 in both the 2005-06 and 2010-11 seasons.<\/p>\n
\u201cObviously the results are fun, and right now we\u2019re winning, but like, we (can\u2019t) only focus on the results,\u201d forward Sam Poulin said. \u201cWe have to focus on the process, and that\u2019s an everyday thing. So if we have the right mindset (and) we have the right attitude every time we come to the rink, then good things are going to happen. That\u2019s what we have to do.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Penguins\u2019 depth will have a chance to emerge this week as injuries and call-ups will have the lineup looking a little different.<\/p>\n
Forward Atley Calvert, who was off to a hot start, leading the team with four goals last week, sustained an upper body injury in Friday night\u2019s game against Charlotte and didn\u2019t play Saturday. His status for Wednesday night\u2019s game is unknown.<\/p>\n
Injuries in Pittsburgh to defenseman Caleb Jones and forward Rickard Rakell, both expected to be out long term, had a ripple effect on the AHL roster.<\/p>\n
Forward Ville Koivunen was called up following Saturday\u2019s overtime winner in Charlotte, appearing in the NHL Penguins\u2019 6-3 win over St. Louis on Monday.<\/p>\n
Owen Pickering, who practiced Monday afternoon in Wilkes-Barre at the Toyota SportsPlex, was called up Tuesday.<\/p>\n
Those injuries and roster moves caused Wilkes-Barre\/Scranton to make moves, adding defenseman Daniel Laatsch and forward Nolan Renwick from their ECHL affiliate Wheeling Nailers.<\/p>\n
Both players were in Penguins\u2019 training camp, with Renwick playing in the Penguins\u2019 season-opening win against Hartford on Oct. 11.<\/p>\n
Penguins goaltender Sergei Murashov was named the AHL\u2019s player of the week, following his two wins last week, including a 25-save shutout in Charlotte on Friday. Murashov is off to a 5-0-0 start with a 1.40 goals-against average and a .949 save percentage.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think he\u2019s carried over a lot of the confidence from last year into (training) camp and then here,\u201d Penguins coach Kirk MacDonald said. \u201cI think it\u2019s a credit to the group, him being named player of the week, as well.\u201d<\/p>\n
Murashov was the first Penguins player to be named AHL player of the week since defenseman Andrey Pedan was named in January 2018.<\/p>\n
Last week<\/p>\n
Wednesday \u2014 Penguins 4, Lehigh Valley 1: The Penguins jumped out to a 2-0 lead on first-period goals from Danton Heinen and Avery Hayes, and added two more tallies in the middle frame on an Atley Calvert power-play marker and a Ville Koivunen penalty shot.<\/p>\n
\u201cI thought we came out with good energy. We were focused before the game about starting on time and I thought we did a really good job,\u201d MacDonald said. \u201cPower play got us going, great face-off goal by (Tristan Broz\u2019s) line and I thought we carried that momentum. The first period was dominant.\u201d<\/p>\n
Sergei Murashov was once again strong in net in what was his third straight start, stopping all but one of the 27 shots he faced.<\/p>\n
Friday \u2014\u00a0 Penguins 4, Charlotte 0: The Penguins got their first shutout of the season with Murashov getting the 25-save perfect game.<\/p>\n
Alex Alexeyev scored his first as a Penguin early in the first period and Ville Koivunen (one goal, two assists) and Danton Heinen (one goal, two assists) each recorded three-point nights to pace the offensive attack in the middle frame. Joona Koppanen scored his first of the season in the third period.<\/p>\n
Saturday \u2014 Penguins 3, Charlotte 2 (OT): Charlotte scored early in the first and second periods, but the Penguins were able to find tying goals from Tristan Broz and Heinen to send the game to the third period tied at 2.<\/p>\n
After a scoreless third period, Owen Pickering made a terrific play at the offensive zone blue line to steal a puck and maintain possession during the 3-on-3 overtime, reaching and smacking it ahead to Koivunen (goal, assist) for a game-winning shot from just inside the right-wing faceoff circle to complete the overtime win.<\/p>\n
Filip Larsson backstopped Wilkes-Barre\/Scranton, stopping 32 of the 34 shots, including 16 of the 17 in the opening period to keep the Penguins in a one-goal game early in the contest.<\/p>\n
Week ahead<\/p>\n
The Penguins start off the week with Wednesday night\u2019s battle against the Bruins. Wilkes-Barre\/Scranton also hosts Bridgeport on Friday at 7:05 p.m. before a quick turnaround in Utica on Saturday night at 6 p.m.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Wilkes-Barre\/Scranton Penguins look to keep their season-opening win streak alive and continue their strong play through the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":7799,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[1902,178,180,179,726],"class_list":{"0":"post-18334","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\/18334","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=18334"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18334\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7799"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18334"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18334"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18334"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}