With the Flyers still off for the 4 Nations break, the Phantoms were on full display for anyone who was looking to keep up with some of the action taking place elsewhere in the pipeline. It was going to be a busy slate of action for them, with their fifth three-in-three of the season on deck, but it was another good test emerging of not just the team’s conditioning level, but also their focus and attention to detail, and, ultimately, their ability to carry momentum over from game to game.
All told, the weekend started out well for them. They began with a trip up to Wilkes-Barre on Friday for the next installment of what’s been, no doubt about it, an especially heated rivalry through the first half of the season. And though this ended up being yet another game where the Phantoms had to rally and come from behind in order to stay in it, they managed to do just this, pulling even from a one-goal deficit in the third period and hanging on to win it in the shootout. And then back at home on Saturday, things settled down for them a little more, still, as they cruised to a relatively tidy win over Syracuse — beating them by a 4-2 margin, never once trailing on the scoreboard and limiting the Crunch to just 18 shots on goal across the whole of the game.
And this was a game where, while they weren’t absolutely perfect, it felt like things were trending in the right direction for them. “We won the checking game,” head coach Ian Laperriere said after the game, when asked about the key to their success. And it really was that simple — they were hard on pucks and focused in their defensive zone coverages, and they didn’t give up a lot for Syracuse to work with, and in the stretches when their play did slip a bit — the second period — they were able to block a ton of shots to help erase some of their mistakes.
It was a good effort for them, but the next task ahead of them, the rematch with the Penguins on Sunday, wasn’t going to be an easy one. “I feel like it’s whoever manages the puck and the game the best that’s gonna come out the winner,” Laperriere said, “and we need to be better about when we take penalties and where we take those penalties… and the puck management’s going to be key for us.”
Key indeed was puck management in that Sunday game, and puck management was exactly the thing which sunk them in that game, in the end. In truth, it was a game that they never really felt that they had control over. They looked lost in their coverages, they were overcomplicating plays that didn’t require it, and they were at times incredibly careless with how they were handling and moving the puck. Laperriere pointed to their second period as being particularly troubling, noting that in the “second period we just turned the puck away, too many turnovers. And I don’t know, we’ve gotta learn. And especially [with] three-in-three, it’s all about how you manage the puck, and we managed the puck poorly.” The middle frame may have seen their low point reached in terms of process, but the bad habits were spread across the whole game, and that made this another particularly tough loss to swallow.
Now, some grace should be given considering this was the third game of the weekend and anyone would be expected to run out of gas to some degree in the face of that, but it was also the third of a three-in-three for the Penguins as well, and while they also showed some signs of fatigue and struggles in managing the puck, they didn’t let this one get away from them to the same degree that the Phantoms did. Once again, it was a question of who could manage the puck better, and the Phantoms were bested yet again.
And, like Laperriere also alluded to after the game, the Phantoms did come away from this stretch with four of six available points on the weekend, but the lingering feeling is that they could have played better across the whole of it. Again, the issue of being able to sustain momentum that they’ve worked hard to build has reared its head, and now they’re back at the square one of having to rebound from a pretty deflating game and get rolling again.
But, if nothing else, there’s a good opportunity for them to find their form again. The Phantoms kick off the first of four game on a road trip out West to face Grand Rapids, Rockford, and Milwaukee tonight — teams they don’t often face and don’t have as much of a book on. But teams love to talk about road trips as an opportunity to strip away any distractions and just be with each other, to get comfortable, and to buckle down and really focus on their game, and that’s just what lies in front of them now. It’s a long season of challenges in many forms, and we’ll see how they fare in this next one.