You know, it’s just way too early in the season for these guys to be doing this sort of thing.
The Syracuse Crunch, down 5-0 6:35 into the second period, came back to win the game in overtime by a score of 6-5.
The goal scorers were Cory Conacher, Mark Barberio, Brett Connolly, Ondrej Palat, J.T. Wyman, and Richard Panik. Tyler Johnson had three assists, and Dustin Tokarski was the winning goalie. But that’s not the whole story.
Total team penalty minutes were: Binghamton – 80 minutes on 20 penalties; Syracuse – 72 minutes on 23 penalties.
By the way, did you hear there was a goalie fight? Of course there was – you can watch the video of it HERE. Robin Lehner of Sweden and Riku Helenius of Finland decided to have a fight at center ice. It was quite the spectacle in an otherwise boring game.
Okay, it wasn’t at all boring, but it also wasn’t what you wanted to see from any team.
Both of the starting goalies were ejected for fighting, and their backups were put in. Which is how Tokarski became the goalie of record for the game. Helenius gets credited with getting five goals scored on him, but since Tokarski was in net when the game winner was scored, he ended up with the win. Incidentally, the first Syracuse goal was scored a minute after Helenius was ejected.
There were eight fights in this game – including the goalies. There were a total of 18 power plays awarded as well, though no team did well on special teams. Binghamton scored twice on 11 power plays while Syracuse scored once on seven chances. Mike Angelidis had 17 PIMs while Jared Nightingale had 16 PIMs.
In the first period, J.T. Brown was injured and did not return. That prompted a fight all on its own. He was boarded and wasn’t able to put weight on a leg when he was helped off of the ice.
The interesting stat of the night was that Syracuse led on shots all game long. They ended with 42, while the Senators had only 27. The Crunch held the Senators to four shots in the third period. Palat and Panik had five shots each, while Conacher, Connolly, Alex Killorn, and Pierre-Cedric Labrie had four shots apiece.
It wasn’t a pretty game by any means, but it was entertaining. Depending on who you were rooting for dictated which part of the game you enjoyed watching, of course. Most Crunch and Lightning fans would’ve like to have skipped the first half of the game, for the most part, while Senators fans would’ve probably preferred to skip the last half.
And, to think, this is only Game 4 of the season. Let’s hope these guys settle down a bit here soon. Otherwise, fans may need to start taking blood pressure medicine, or up the prescription that they already have.
As a side note, the Norfolk Admirals are keeping the regular win-streak alive – they’ve won their first four games of the season, adding on to the streak that most of the guys in Syracuse started, to make it 32 games.
The Crunch’s next game is tomorrow, at Wilkes-Barre/Scranton. Game time is early – 5 pm. We’ll have a game thread going, so come join us!
