Getting Healthier, but Wins Still Elusive

The Pack started to get out from under the pain of some of their injury woes this past week, but if anything, the lack of notches in the win column became even more painful.

Very little would have had to change for the Wolf Pack to have gone 3-0 on the week, which would have put them right back into a playoff spot, but as it was they went 0-1-2, losing three one-goal games and seeing their record fall below the .500 mark, to 26-27-5-4.

The Wolf Pack welcomed back two key cogs off the injured list, one up front and one on the blueline, when P.A. Parenteau and Mathieu Dandenault both got back to active duty Friday against Springfield.

The lift those two provided was immediately evident, as the Wolf Pack were able to possess the puck much more consistently, and with significantly more confidence, than they had at least in the month Parenteau missed (they had been without Dandenault since before the first of December).

Unfortunately for the club, the infusion of skill and savvy did not translate into more pucks going into the back of the opponent’s net, in either Friday’s or Saturday night’s home games.

Falcon goaltender Devan Dubnyk, down from parent-club Edmonton for the Olympic break, put up a wall against the Wolf Pack on Friday, and the Pack got away from their game in the third period, losing a 1-0 lead and yielding the winning goal on the first shift of overtime.

Saturday’s game against Portland, which was playing its seventh game in nine days, was a cautious, grind-it-out affair, and the Pack ended up costing themselves a chance at two points by putting the Pirates on the power play in overtime, Dandenault roughing up Portland rookie Tyler Ennis, who has worn out the Wolf Pack this year and ended up burying the winner.

Parenteau came alive in Sunday’s visit to Lowell, putting up a hat trick, but the Pack couldn’t take advantage in what would go down as a frustrating loss, a 4-3 verdict that dropped the Wolf Pack to 11 points out of the fourth-place spot in the Atlantic.

The difference in that game was a pair of Devils goals in a 2:56 span early in the second period, one on a quick transition on which the Pack failed to get the puck deep in the offensive zone and then got beaten into their end by Lowell’s Matt Halischuk, and another on a neutral-zone turnover that was converted by Michael Swift, and a power-play goal by Ben Walter with, yeesh, 0.6 seconds left in the second, after the Wolf Pack should have had the puck out of the zone and only 51 seconds after Parenteau’s second of the game had cut a Devil lead to 3-2.

On the positive side, if Parenteau is ready to get hot, and he sure looked like it Sunday, and Dandenault can continue to stabilize the defense, then the Wolf Pack are going to be a very difficult team to play against in the coming weeks. And hopefully the Rangers’ move to acquire Alex Auld off re-entry waivers from Dallas will make things less scrambly for goaltenders Chad Johnson and Matt Zaba.

The team definitely needs to buckle down in the small areas of the game, though, and give themselves a chance to gut out some wins without having to dig themselves out of holes and recover from simple mistakes. If they can’t do that, then no matter what changes or additions the organization might make at next week’s “Clear Day” roster deadline, the Pack are going to face a difficult task in striving to keep the team’s 12-year playoff streak alive.