Phantoms Kinged by Checkers in Preseason Opener

By Tommy Hendricks, Sports Talk Philly staff writer 

Over the last few weeks, the Flyers have been sending players left and right to the AHL and the Lehigh Valley Phantoms. That group opened the preseason on Friday night against the Charlotte Checkers.

After falling behind early, the Phantoms never recovered, dropping the preseason opener, 6-1, on Friday night at PPL Center.

Lehigh Valley would start the period committing quite a few turnovers, but would have Anthony Stolarz to bail them out every time. The Phantoms would have few opportunities of their own, but Alex Nedeljkovic held the fort for the Checkers.

Over halfway through the period, the game was scoreless and the teams started to pick up the intensity. A few moments later, a turnover would be costly for Lehigh Valley. Brody Sutter would find a loose puck along the near-side wall, and slide a pass across ice to awaiting Mike Kirkpatrick. Kirkpatrick snapped a fadeaway shot from the top of the far circle up under the bar behind Stolarz.

Just under a minute later, Charlotte would make it 2-0 as Andrew Poturalski would take a shot from the top of the far-side face-off dot and put it past Stolarz on the glove side. Despite a late period surge, and leading in shots 11-10, the Phantoms headed to the room down two.

A penalty that was called at the end of the first period would give the Phantoms a golden opportunity to cut the deficit to one. They would do just that 12 seconds into the period.

Travis Sanheim roared down the near side boards and made a cross-crease to Greg Carey for the tip-in goal, showcasing the potential of the mix of veterans and young guns.

Charlotte would not let the Phantoms get any closer, actually putting quite a bit of distance between the two teams. The Checkers rattled off four straight goals, including a power-play goal, to make the game 6-1 before the end of the period. The goals would come from Kirkpatrick, his second, Mike Tennyson, Sutter and Jake Chelios respectfully. Chelios would add an assist, Sutter would as well to give himself three points, and Kirkpatrick added a helper to make it a three-point night as well.  

The third would be come a physical and undisciplined affair. Both teams combined for seven penalties just nine minutes in, including five in less than two minutes. The back-and-forth, up-ice action kept both goalies busy, but neither team would score. Unfortunately for Lehigh Valley, who did control most of the play in the final period, they would just get outplayed en route to the 6-1 rout.

Quotes:

T.J. Brennan on what to take out of tonight's game: "It's a preseason game, but there were a lot of positives. The score wasn't of result, but it doesn't count toward the record so. For me, it's all about the process of getting better throughout the season and making sure you're headed upwards always. You've gotta start somewhere."

Head coach Scott Gordon on what he wanted the team to improve upon: "One of the things I believe we needed to improve upon [from last season] was the ability of our defensemen to move up into the play. Be a better team of the rush. That's one of the things I thought we did really well tonight. In saying that, there's pros and cons to it. Being too anxious to get up in the rush, you end up giving up goals we're not going to be giving up because it was a poor read and then just some sloppy turnovers. We weren't sharp through the neutral zone, not identifying the pressure, and those would end up in the back of our net. They got what was basically a five-on-three goal. I thought, from a defensive standpoint, even though we gave up the six goals, we did a lot of good things coming out of our zone and defending in our zone. Most of our problems came off the rush, where we didn't do the right things before the play even started."

The Phantoms close out their preseason schedule against these same Charlotte Checkers on Saturday night at PPL Center.