The Wilkes-Barre\/Scranton Penguins dispatched the Hershey Bears in Game 4 last night, booting the Washington Capitals\u2019 AHL affiliate from the playoffs with a 4-1 victory.<\/p>\n
Harrison Brunicke scored what ended up as the game-winning goal in the second period while shorthanded. Brunicke followed up on a shot from Gabe Klassen and activated all the way up on the rush to sling in a rebound, right after Hershey failed to score at the other end of the ice.<\/p>\n
The Bears couldn\u2019t get much going, WBS\u2019s Sergei Murashov had by far his best night of the playoffs so far in stopping 36 of 37 shots. Hershey was desperate with their season on the line and pushing to get back in the game but they just couldn\u2019t beat Murashov.<\/p>\n
Wilkes went up by two goals early in the third, and let\u2019s talk about this setup from Mikhail Ilyin to make it happen. He\u2019s made this type of cheeky little touch pass so many times in the KHL, now these highlights are starting to pop up in the AHL. It\u2019s a nice finish by Ville Koivunen but it\u2019s just that creativity, vision and special something from Ilyin is starting to get to the surface and show up at this level. It\u2019s really exciting. Ilyin, 21, is up to three AHL playoff points in four games. It\u2019s not quite the production level of 21-year old Jake Guentzel scoring 14 AHL playoff points in 10 games his first taste of pro hockey in 2016, but let\u2019s see him make more plays like this with any frequency in the weeks ahead and it will start to make you at least begin to wonder about just how much of his scoring talent might translate to North American hockey.<\/p>\n
While making lofty comparisons to 2016, is IBK the new HBK?<\/p>\n
Ilyin, Tristan Broz (who also made a nice play on the rush in that Koivunen goal) and Koivunen are tough to handle as a third line, talented enough to be an AHL first line. Wilkes has some serious talent and has it all split out for now into a nice, deep lineup. It\u2019s been working, especially since AHL contract players like Aiden McDonough and Gabe Klassen have been more than holding up their ends of the bargain with strong play.<\/p>\n
Up next for the Penguins is attempting to be the bad guy in a Cinderella story. Sixth seeded Springfield (which, remember, that\u2019s sixth within just the DIVISION, not the conference) upset top-ranked Providence after winning two overtime games. Providence was far and away the top-performing team in the regular season, now they\u2019re the victim of the biggest playoff upset in AHL history in terms of losing to a team that had 38 fewer points in the standings.<\/p>\n
That will make Springfield dangerous, and they\u2019re not without skill. St. Louis sent 2024 and 2025 first round picks to join up with the AHL club and add more youth\/talent to the mix. Springfield choked down once-mighty Providence, who only managed six total goals across the four games of their series.<\/p>\n
That will present an interesting challenge for the Pens, but one they\u2019ll surely look forward to after ending the season of one of their biggest rivals, who WBS dominated all year long. Again for WBS and for Pittsburgh a lot of the key names that they would want to see succeed in this playoff run made a major impact on the night between players like Brunicke, Murashov and Koivunen making the difference and stepping up in a major way to help push the team to a series-clinching victory on the road.<\/p>\n
Game 1 of the Atlantic Division Final is next Tuesday, May 12th, at home for WBS, they move on in the playoffs after being one of the worst AHL teams in the 2022-23 season then getting bounced early in the 2024 and 2025 playoffs. This team has done well to experience the first step of success, now they get to go up against an underdog that has showed a lot of bite in the next round.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Wilkes-Barre\/Scranton Penguins dispatched the Hershey Bears in Game 4 last night, booting the Washington Capitals\u2019 AHL affiliate…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":631149,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[66],"tags":[385,99,124707],"class_list":["post-631148","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nhl","tag-nhl","tag-sports","tag-wbs-weekly"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/631148","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=631148"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/631148\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/631149"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=631148"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=631148"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=631148"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}