Wolf Pack Stay in the Hunt

It’s still a long shot, what with the Bridgeport Sound Tigers only needing one win and one Wolf Pack loss to eliminate the Pack, and the Norfolk Admirals still ahead of the Wolf Pack in the playoff standings, but the Wolf Pack certainly did themselves some good this past week.

Two solid wins in three games, and some luck on the scoreboard, with the Sound Tigers dropping a pair, have the Pack’s playoff chances looking a lot more realistic than they did a week ago.

The Pack enter the week five points out of a playoff spot with four games to play, and still with the ability to get to as high as 85 points if they win all four of their remaining games.

Bridgeport starts the week with 82 points and faces games in Lowell and home against Manchester before hosting the Wolf Pack in the regular season finale Sunday.

Norfolk, meanwhile, has 80 points, three more than the Pack, with their remaining schedule including a pair of home games against Hershey on the weekend, after a visit to Wilkes-Barre/Scranton Wednesday, hardly an easy slate.

The Wolf Pack even still have an outside chance to catch Lowell, although that is tenuous. Currently occupying the fourth-place spot in the Atlantic Division, the Devils, with 84 points, only need one win in their last three games to ensure that they will finish ahead of the Pack. After Friday’s home game against Bridgeport, Lowell finishes at Portland and home to Providence.

The biggest imperative, of course, in any prospect of the Wolf Pack still making the postseason is that they win their games, and that will be no small feat this week.

The biggest obstacle will be the pair of games that faces the Pack against first-place Worcester, Wednesday in Hartford and Friday on the road. The Wolf Pack handled the Sharks remarkably well in the first four games of the season series, winning all four, three of them fairly convincingly, but Worcester has come back to take the last two.

Even though the Sharks have been missing Rookie of the Year candidate Logan Couture for almost three weeks now, they can beat you a lot of different ways. The Pack did a pretty nice job this past Wednesday on the likes of Steven Zalewski, Ryan Vesce, Ben Ferriero, etc., only to have John McCarthy touch them up for a goal and two assists and Dan DaSilva bag a goal and an assist.

Also, Worcester has lost back-to-back games coming into this week, and although they long ago wrapped up a playoff spot they still definitely have plenty to play for, holding a one-point lead over Portland for first place in the division and wanting to go into the postseason with some positive momentum.

If the Pack can manage to beat the Sharks twice, then they face a classic “trap” game against last-place Springfield in the home finale Saturday. The Falcons didn’t put up much of a fight in the game against the Wolf Pack in Springfield this past Saturday, which the Pack won easily, 6-1, but the Falcons have no pressure on them at all and the Wolf Pack will have plenty, assuming they are still in the race at that point, and that’s always a dangerous situation for the team that still has something at stake.

If the Sound Tigers win both of their games Friday and Saturday it won’t matter anyway, but what a situation it would be if the Wolf Pack could go into that last game in Bridgeport with a chance to get into the playoffs with a victory!

That seemed very far-fetched just a week or so ago, but now isn’t quite so much of a pipe dream.

Of course, it looks like the Wolf Pack are going to have to make whatever run they are going to be able to make still missing a couple of key cogs in their lineup.
They got Corey Locke back from the Rangers Sunday, but lost Dale Weise, who was playing as well as anybody on the roster the past couple of weeks.

Certainly no surprise that Weise gets a chance, after Locke got the opportunity to play his first two career games in a Ranger uniform. Weise had scored goals in four straight games, equaling a Wolf Pack season high that he shared with Locke, and had points in seven straight, which is a pro career high for him.

The toughest thing about losing Weise is that his line, with Kris Newbury at center, Weise on the right side and Dane Byers on left wing, had developed some great chemistry in their month together and was playing as well as any line I’ve seen in recent weeks. It’s a real hard-banging, gritty, but deceptively-skilled threesome, and I’ll be interested to see whom the Wolf Pack plug into Weise’s spot, if they don’t break the whole line up and look for a totally new combination.

With missing Locke and P.A. Parenteau, and Anders Eriksson on the defense, recently, the Wolf Pack have had, by necessity, to throw a couple of untested newcomers into the fire. And by and large, those guys have not disappointed.

The Pack have gotten real good mileage out of blueliner Lee Baldwin, who brought only one year of Division One college experience to the Wolf Pack lineup and who scored his first pro point with a goal 47 seconds into Saturday’s game in Springfield. And Chris McKelvie, while not given as much ice time over the last two games as Baldwin has been, certainly has been a useful cog for a depleted forward crew, and played a big role in the Wolf Pack’s second goal of the Springfield game, which came just 2:10 after Baldwin’s tally and put the Falcons into a hole they would never climb out of.