Phantoms lose games to fighting

Mandatory Credit: Dale Zanine-US PRESSWIRE

In the Phantoms last game we saw some good disciplined play, a hat trick from Brayden Schenn and a 4-1 victory. So when they continued on with their road tour this weekend, fans assumed they would carry over that momentum into their next game. Well they were wrong, because when the Phantoms played the Binghamton Senators they lost 5-2.

The key differences between this game and their last game lies mostly in the penalties.  There were barely any penalty minutes in their last game but in this one there were A LOT.  There were few penalties in the first, but the period focused mostly on scoring.

Couturier was assisted by Zolnierczyk and Manning early in the first period as they scored the first goal of the game. The only problem was that the Senators were right behind the Phantoms with two back to back goals to give them a two goal leg up as they went into the second period.

The second period is where we saw the Phantoms start to get undisciplined.  Holmstrom was able to tie the game early on assisted by Schenn and Wellwood, but like the first period the Senators were right behind them. Cannone and Zibanejad scored within a few minutes of each other to again give the Senators the lead and that’s when the Phantoms decided to show how they like to throw down.

With only a few minutes left in the game four fights occurred at minute 18:01, well it was more like the brawl that happened against the Philadelphia Flyers and the Pittsburgh Penguins in the post-season. It was brutal.  Bourdon, Roe, and Testwuide all got fighting and game misconduct penalties while Brown only got a fighting. For the Senators,  Claesson, Dziurzynski and Eckford also got misconducts and fighting penalties. Grant who was also present for the brawl got a single fighting major. Slow clap for Zac Rinaldo, for not being apart of it. Looks like some Phantoms are trying to remain disciplined.

The fighting just proved that it didn’t bring momentum to the Phantoms game. They continued to fight (not literally this time) in the last period but were unable to get a puck past Bishop. As the Senators were up by one goal they served the Phantoms their dominance til the very last second as they got an empty netter to secure their 5-2 win.

It’s difficult to pick yourself back up from a game like that to start over, but the Phantoms attempted as they played the Syracuse Crunch the next night. However, it turned out equally as bad for the Phantoms with an identical 5-2 loss. As we can recall from the last time the teams met, they do not like each other, which is clear when we see that fights and misconducts were assessed in this game as well.

The Crunch got on the board first in the first period and then scored early in the second on a power play. It was after the power play goal that a fight broke out between Eddy and Labrie. These two offenses early in the game didn’t stop then and there. A few minutes later Phantoms Bourdon and Crunch’s Connolly and Gudas all got two minute game misconducts.   The fighting and misconducts really hurt the Phantoms scoring chances as the Crunch was able to score a third goal. This was followed by another fight and another  Syracuse goal.

As the period continued the Phantoms were still taking bad penalties which allowed the Crunch to score another power play goal. With a few minutes left in the period the Phantoms got their chance with a power play goal scored by Schenn, but the team was already down by too many goals.

The Phantoms got in another goal early in the third and they did prevent the Crunch from scoring again, but this did not help them as they could not tied up the game. There was even another fight in the third period between Panik and Manning.

Although the Phantoms tried to bring the game back to them it was much too late. They took too many penalties and not enough shots.

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