Penguins Prospects were up to the Challenge!

Our Penguins’ Prospects won beat the Buffalo Sabres’ Prospects yesterday afternoon, going 2 and 1 in the 3 game tournament. The win put them in a tie for the top spot of the Challenge with their New York host. However, by virtue of their win over the home town team, they earned the tie breaker and nabbed the crown.

I know, I know, these games mean nothing in the standings. Furthermore, this was a tournament where prospects played prospects. How the kids will react when camp opens and they have to start playing against NHL caliber players remains to be seen.

Also, barring almost Divine intervention, none of these kids will get a chance to don the big clubs sweater this fall. The ridiculous corner the parent club has painted itself into with its Cap crunch gives them little to no room for one of these youngsters to slip through no matter how good they may have looked.

In the end, though, keep in mind, winning is always better than losing, and we did win. Last year we didn’t; no only didn’t we win the tournament, we didn’t win anything at all.

Some of you readers may have been keeping up with our fledgling flightless fowl but for those that haven’t had that chance let me first catch you up with a quick recap of games 1 and 2.

Our most recent draftees; Samuel Poulin and Nathan Legare scored in our Penguins’ first game, a last minute loss to the Boston Bruins’ Prospects on Friday. Returning prospect Sam Miletic added a third goal in that game.

Saturday found our Penguins topping the New Jersey Devils’ Prospects 2 – 1. Our Penguins were led by the teams big Right Wing (RW) Anthony Angello and goalie Alex D’Orio. Angello has been praised over the course of the tournament for growing into a leader who imposes his will on the other team with his 6’-5” frame. D’Orio was subject to the same lack of defensive support the big club’s goalies, Matt Murray and Casey DeSmith suffer through every game. He faced over 30 shots while only surrendering 1 goal. Given the struggles he had last year, this return to the form that earned him a contract as a walk on with Miletic and Jordy Bellerive, two falls ago is great sign for a team that seems poised to be in desperate need of a young goalie for their pipeline.

Yesterday afternoon, our aquatic avians jumped all over Buffalo early and often in the second period and then had to hold on in the third period.

Sam Lafferty opened up the scoring from Jake Lucchini clear, with a shorthanded tally. Then Angello struck, he tapped a loose puck past a Sabre Defenseman who was trying to hold the puck in at the Penguins’ blue-line, then out skated several other Sabres the rest of the ice on a straight line toward the goal, before ripping a low wrist shot past the Buffalo’s back-stop from about the hash marks of the face off circles.

Angello wasn’t satisfied with just one goal. On a play that started with Miletic breaking out of his own zone, head-manning the puck up to Jon Marino and ending with Marino driving into the Sabres zone before tic-tac-toeing a pass back to his defensive partner, Michael Kim, who fed the puck in front of the net to Angello barging into the crease for an easy tip-in.

Bellerive struck next from a Left Wing (LW) face off. Lucchini won the draw. Legare gathered the puck in and dropped it back to the Pierre-Olivier Joseph on the left point. Joseph quickly fed the puck cross point to Bellerive while Lucchini provided a screen in front of the crease, keeping the Sabres goalie from seeing Bellerive’s shot so that it could find the back of the net.

Later in the second period, the Penguins’ defense looked a lot like the parent club’s defense, absent. After Emil Larmi gave up a fat rebound off of his right leg pad from a Henri Jokiharju shot, Penguins’ defensemen Joseph and Jon Lizotte just stood around like pylons while Sabres’ forward Brett Murray slammed home the rebound.

With less than two seconds left in the second period another Jokiharu shot through traffic that Penguins’ Defenseman couldn’t handle found its way past Larmi.

One minute and 35 seconds into the third, the entire Penguins’ team defense looked like a five year old soccer. The entire team, except for Lucchini, followed the puck into the corner, Leaving Rasmus Asplund wide open at the bottom of the LW face-off circle to drive a slap shot past Larmi and our seafaring sphenisciforms found themselves clinging to a one goal lead.

Less than two minutes later, our Penguins Prospects channeled their parent club by giving up the lead on a shorthanded goal. Larmi no doubt would love to have that one back. It was a sharp angled slap shot from the LW board off of the stick of Asplund again.

However, these kids would not be denied. Joseph fed Lucchini coming in toward the Sabres’ line on the LW boards. Stepping across the blue line and drawing two defenders to him Lucchini found Bellerive with a nifty saucers pass down the LW circle, sending him in all alone. The Sabres’ goalie denied the Penguins’ Center, but the rebound jumped up the slot to Legare’s stick for the kid to hammer home the game winner at 16:04 of the third.

Poulin iced the game with an empty net goal shot from the red-line.

I know this was only kids against kids and even if any of them distinguish themselves in training camp and preseason the chances are slim and none with slim having left town for us to see any of them, even the older ones with AHL experience but I can’t help but get excited about seeing more of these forwards.

Next up, training camp!

I am starting to feel it – Go Pens!!!!