HARTFORD, Conn – Dylan McIlrath’s first goal of the season gave the Hartford Wolf Pack a 3-2 overtime win over the Syracuse Crunch Friday night at the XL Center.
McIlrath scored at 2:34 of the OT, after Dylan Blujus had tied the score for Syracuse early in the third period. Chris Bourque and Shawn O’Donnell had the other Wolf Pack goals, and Yann Danis made 24 saves in his first Wolf Pack appearance. Henri Ikonen also scored for Syracuse, and Andrei Vasilevskiy made 35 stops. 
The Pack struck first while on a five-on-three power play, at the 12-minute mark of the first period. It was Chris Bourque who fired a slap shot from the top of the right circle that beat Vasilevskiy over his blocker to give Hartford a 1-0 lead.
“I think power play was especially good because we’ve been under a little fire lately,” Wolf Pack coach Ken Gernander said. “Just the first goal in general seemed to kind of boost our team and give us a little bit of spark. I thought we were a little slow at the start. Took two penalties and we got two big kills and that was important too. The special teams I think played a big part tonight, you could see that.”
With 17:02 left in the second period, Chad Nehring fired a shot on net from just inside the right faceoff dot and O’Donnell was there to bang the rebound in from the side of the net.
“It was one of those things, it sat there. It was a gift,” said O’Donnell. “I was the beneficiary of being in the right place at the right time.”
Syracuse bounced right back with a goal of their own only 58 seconds later, to cut the Pack lead to one. The Crunch came in on a two-on-one and Ikonen one-timed in a pass from Joel Vermin.
The Crunch power play unit was able to tie the game up 3:58 into the third period, when Blujus fired a slap shot from the top of the faceoff circle and beat Danis five-hole.
The game went to overtime, and McIlrath ended it by firing in a loose puck from the slot. Marek Hrivik was the man who fired the puck at the net from below the goal line that caused the chaos in front of the net.
“That was a good goalie we faced,” said McIlrath. “We wanted to get as many chances as we could, and I’m just glad we got the win.”
The Pack have three games this weekend, and are off to a good start by defeating the second place team in the Northeast Division.
“We haven’t had a 3-in-3 in a little bit, so it is obviously great to get the first win out of the way,” said McIlrath. “Tomorrow is going to be a big game against Springfield, another great team.”
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