SYRACUSE, N.Y. – The Wilkes-Barre/Scranton Penguins avenged last Saturday’s shutout defeat against the Syracuse Crunch, picking up a 3-2 win at Onondaga County War Memorial at Oncenter. The win put Coach Hynes atop the leaderboard with the most wins in WBS Penguins’ franchise history (116).
Leading 2-1 at the 10:20 mark of the second, the Penguins went ahead by two on Trevor Smith’s 10th of the season. Eric Tangradi worked by the Crunch defense to muscle a backhander on goal that was stopped with the pad by Dustin Tokarski, but Smith swooped in to roof the rebound.
Syracuse shrunk the Penguins’ edge to just one with 1:15 remaining until the intermission as Tyler Johnson found a loose puck among traffic in front of goalie Jeff Zatkoff and knuckled a shot across the goal line.
Wilkes-Barre/Scranton and Zatkoff held the Crunch off the board for the rest of the contest to earn the 3-2 victory and snap a six-game winless streak. Zatkoff stopped 29-of-31 shots to go to 11-7-0 on the season.
Paul Thompson ended the Penguins recent 0-for-27 drought on the power-play at 3:57 of the first period. Thompson finished off a tic-tac-toe passing play with Brian Gibbons and Riley Holzapfel by elevating the puck over Tokarski’s shoulder to give the Penguins a 1-0 lead.
The Crunch’s Alex Killorn continued to add to his goal streak, tying the game at the 9:21. The tally marked his sixth goal in as many games; the longest current streak in the AHL. J.T. Wyman and Gudas assisted on the goal.
Fourteen seconds later, Wilkes-Barre/Scranton regained its lead when Joey Mormina pounced on a turnover at the near blueline and ripped a shot by Crunch goalie Dustin Tokarski for his first goal of the year.
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