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They play their home
games in Wilkes-Barre Township. And the words “Wilkes-
Barre/Scranton” are embroidered into their sweaters.
But to their American
Hockey League opponents,
they might as well have come
from nowhere.
They are the Wilkes-Barre/Scranton Penguins.
They are the team that
stunned their fans, their
league and their critics.
But not themselves.
On Monday night, the Saint
John Flames ended the Penguins’ dreams of going from
the bottom to the top, winning
the Calder Cup 4 games to 2 in
New Brunswick, Canada. The
final game was decided, 1-0, on
a goal scored with five seconds
left in the second period.
Although the “team of destiny’s” run ended two games
short of the ultimate goal, the
Penguins players say they will
remember this season as a special one.
REVERSE SKATE
It’s tough to know
where you’re going,
Greg Crozier insists,
unless you know
where you’ve been.
And in 1999-2000,
the team’s first go-round against the
AHL, the team didn’t
particularly like the
places it visited.
It gazed upon the
unsightly vistas of
fifth place in the
AHL’s Empire Division.
It stood on the
less-than-hallowed
ground located just two points
away from the hellish last-place hotel.
And they were forced to
visit somewhere perhaps even
more vile than those other
places once the playoffs
started.
Home.
Last season’s 23-43-9-5 record turned out to be the most
jagged of pills for Crozier to
swallow.
After all, the 1999-2000 season was the first since leaving
a University of Michigan powerhouse that won two national
championships during the
Williamsville, N.Y., native’s
four years there.
Like so many of his victory-starved teammates, Crozier
said he wouldn’t settle for another uncompetitive season.
The change was under way.
“Right out of training
camp,” Crozier said, without
hesitation, when asked how
soon he realized the Penguins’
second campaign would be different from the first. “Coach
(Glenn Patrick) cut some of
the guys on the team last year
that actually played a big role.
The players that did return
were the guys that pretty
much gave everything they
had last year.
“I could tell from the decisions he made that he wanted
to build a team other teams
were afraid to play.”
NEW ATTITUDE
Fortunately for him, Toby
Petersen didn’t have to endure
the difficulties of the Pens’ inaugural season. That doesn’t
mean his would-be teammates
who did were reluctant to give
him a history lesson.
“We heard a lot about the
struggles,” the rookie from
Colorado College said, “but we
also heard a lot about the positive things — like how great it
was to play here.”
And the Penguins built off
the positive, not the negative.
With a cast that included
returning front-liners Crozier,
Tom Kostopoulos, Dennis Bonvie and Martin Sonnenberg
and defensemen John Slaney,
Sven Butenschon, Andrew
Ference and Chris Kelleher,
the Pens rattled off a 13-game
unbeaten streak just six weeks
into the season.
The team that wound up
near the bottom of the league
in its first season found itself
in first place by the end of October.
Chalk up another win for
attitude.
“It seems like, this year, we
expected to win most of our
games. Last year, we were just
trying to compete,” Kostopolous said. “All the guys from
last year got a year’s experience. After we started winning
a few games in the beginning,
we started to gain a little confidence.”
WE MUST OVERCOME
The recipe for eventual success didn’t prove to be an easy
one to follow, as many of the
ingredients changed constantly throughout the year.
The first-half winning
streak became a second-half
losing skid that dropped the
squad to as low as fourth in
the Mid-Atlantic Division.
Slaney and Butenschon, the
team’s only captains this year,
were traded. Ference and left
wing Billy Tibbetts spent most
of the second half of the season
skating in Pittsburgh.
Even without the stars, the
never-say-die attitude the
team adopted in training camp
remained.
And those who were left
said that attitude, as much as
anything, is what made them a
better team — finding ways to
win while your goalie was in
Pittsburgh, playing well when
your roster is depleted and
your best players become
someone else’s best players.
“Last year, I think we relied
on our stars,” Crozier said.
“There were a lot of people out
there looking around, but not
taking initiative. People were
not putting the onus on themselves.
“This year, it’s different.
We all think that if all of us
don’t play well, we won’t win.”
That’s the story of the
Wilkes-Barre/Scranton Penguins.
The team that needed teamwork, and used it.
The team that used equal
parts urgency and patience to
get big wins.
The team that lifted itself
from second from the bottom
will now look to do the same
from second from the top.
“Being a rookie, I didn’t
know everything it took to win
in this league. But I knew the
attitude was right,” Petersen
said. “You could tell pretty
early that something special
was going on.”
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