SPRINGFIELD, Mass. – The Springfield Thunderbirds (13-19-4-2) fought tooth and nail with one of the top clubs in the AHL but came up just short in a 3-2 loss to the Wilkes-Barre\/Scranton Penguins (26-11-1-2) on Monday afternoon inside the MassMutual Center. <\/p>\n
After they did not lead at all in any of their past three losses, the T-Birds finally got off to a 1-0 jump at 12:09 of the first on this day as Simon Robertsson ended a year-long goal-scoring drought, pushing a low slot shot through Sergei Murashov for the lone tally of the first period.<\/p>\n
Vadim Zherenko was locked in from the onset of this one, turning away 16 Penguins shots in each of the first two periods. Unfortunately for the T-Birds, Zherenko\u2019s strong efforts were not enough to keep the Penguins from a pair of second-period tallies, as a Valtteri Puustinen goal off a face-off at 1:36 and Chase Pietila\u2019s first pro goal at 15:41 were enough to give the visitors a one-goal lead into the third. <\/p>\n
Both goaltenders continued to shine in the final period, but a costly penalty to the Penguins granted the T-Birds a power play chance, and Matthew Peca cashed in on a rebound from Calle Rosen and Matt Luff at 3:45 of the third to tie the score, 2-2. Peca\u2019s point streak moved to six straight games, while Luff\u2019s season-best streak moved to eight consecutive contests.<\/p>\n
Zherenko\u2019s night would end with a dazzling 45 stops, but that would prove to be not quite enough, as Gabe Klassen broke the tie at 9:07 of the third, deflecting a hard pass from Rutger McGroaty behind the Springfield goalie to make it a 3-2 game.<\/p>\n
Springfield emptied the tank with Zherenko on the bench in the closing seconds, but Murashov answered the bell with a tremendous lurching save on Hugh McGing with just over 10 seconds remaining. <\/p>\n
The T-Birds will return to home ice on Friday to continue this five-game homestand on Jan. 23 for a 7:05 p.m. tilt against the Toronto Marlies.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"SPRINGFIELD, Mass. – The Springfield Thunderbirds (13-19-4-2) fought tooth and nail with one of the top clubs in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":91469,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[178,180,179],"class_list":{"0":"post-91468","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-scranton","8":"tag-scranton","9":"tag-scranton-headlines","10":"tag-scranton-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/91468","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=91468"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/91468\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/91469"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=91468"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=91468"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=91468"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}