The Wolf Pack had leads of 1-0 and 2-1 Wednesday night at Danbury Ice Arena, but the Springfield Thunderbirds scored the last three goals of the game for a 4-2 win, in the AHL preseason opener for both teams.
Ryan Gropp and Jeff Taylor scored the Wolf Pack goals. Jake Massie, Rodrigo Abols and Jonathan Ang scored for Springfield, and Blaine Byron added an empty-net goal.
“I liked a lot of the guys,” Wolf Pack head coach Kris Knoblauch said. “A lot of the guys that we’ve been watching, and who have been trying to make this team, played well. They separated themselves from other guys.”
Gropp opened the scoring only 1:56 in. He came into the Springfield zone on a 2-on-1 with Greg Chase and elected to shoot, firing a snap shot past Thunderbird goaltender Ryan Bednard (32 saves) on the stick side.
The Thunderbirds equalized at 13:50, on a goal by Massie. Matt Marcinew fed a pass across the slot to Massie in the left-wing circle, and his shot got by the glove side of Wolf Pack starting netminder Tom McCollum.
The Wolf Pack enjoyed an 11-3 shots advantage in the opening frame.
Hartford went ahead again at 9:06 of the second period, on a shorthanded goal by Taylor. Similar to the play on which Gropp scored in the first, Taylor kept the puck on a 2-on-1, putting a shot high into the net from the left side.
That lead lasted less than a minute-and-a-half, though, as the Springfield power play answered at 11:21, with only 12 seconds left in a hooking penalty to Brandon Crawley. Abols got the goal, sneaking the puck through McCollum’s legs from the left circle.
Francois Brassard replaced McCollum in the Wolf Pack net at that point, after McCollum stopped five of the seven shots he faced, and the Thunderbirds went ahead for the first time with 1:06 remaining in the period.
Ang gave Springfield the lead, taking a cross-ice pass from Byron and firing the puck past Brassard’s catching glove from the right circle.
The third frame was scoreless, except for an empty-net goal by Byron with eight seconds left. With Brassard (ten saves) on the bench for an extra attacker, Byron worked the puck away from Gropp near the Springfield blue line, and was able to fend Gropp off enough to make his way into the Wolf Pack zone and push the puck into the vacated cage.
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