SHARKSPAGE

WorSharks blanked for seventh time this season

The Worcester Sharks had a game scheduled for Friday night at the DCU Center against the St. John’s IceCaps but apparently no one told the players as the WorSharks were dominated in every single way possible in a hockey game and lost 6-0 in front of 4,909 fans, whose jeering of Worcester head coach Roy Sommer was audible throughout the arena for most of the second half of the game and well after the final buzzer in the DCU parking garage. The loss extends Sommer’s AHL career leading coaching loss record to 590, which is 78 more than Hershey Bear’s legendary coach Frank Mathers has in second place.

Worcester Sharks forward Matt Pelech (#23) was just about the only WorSharks player that showed
any intensity at all in Worcester's 6-0 loss to St John's Friday night. After being elbowed by
the IceCaps Brenden Kichton Pelech jumped the Kichton for some retribution.
File photo courtesy of TEAMSHRED

For video highlights, and to be blunt there’s no reason at all to watch them, we once again point to AHLlive.com.

Scratches for Worcester were Jimmy Bonneau (“unavailable”), Konrad Abeltshauser (knee), John McCarthy (hand), and Marek Viedensky (unknown injury). Troy Grosenick was the back-up netminder. Sena Acolatse returned back to the lineup after missing 24 games with a broken lower leg. With just one more regular season game and no playoffs for the WorSharks the injury list is sort of moot, but it likely will have another member added after Brodie Reid got caught up in a massive check thrown by Worcester captain Rob Davison that accidentally collected Reid while Davison was wiping out two IceCaps players. If Reid can’t go Saturday the WorSharks may play one skater short as everyone else is either injured not available to play.

This writer just about never borrows quotes from other reporters; if I was that interested in getting some I’d go to the dressing rooms post game and get them myself. But what WorSharks head coach Roy Sommer told Worcester T&G reporter Carl Setterlund (Bill Ballou is off covering the Red Sox) really bothered me. You can read Setterlund’s entire story here.

“The other (losses against St. John’s) I thought we played all right, at least we were in them,” Sommer said. “But tonight we weren’t in it, from the first goal on. They got that first goal and you could kind of see the bench just go ‘Uh-oh, here we go again.’ ”

Really? Sommer “could kind of see the bench just go ‘Uh-oh, here we go again.'”? Then why did Sommer stand there for 60 minutes with his hands in his pockets? How could a coach that has a reputation for being great at developing prospects just stand there behind the bench and do nothing when he sees his team struggling? Perhaps the better question is why the San Jose organization thinks Sommer is great at developing prospects, because if he really was there’d be more than the small handful of players developed by him in the playoffs in either the NHL or AHL.

As someone that pays close attention to all the rumors about the western NHL teams moving their affiliates out to the west coach, allow me to add some context to each and every story that has been posted since the one about the Phoenix Coyotes wanting their prospects closer to them hit the internet a couple weeks ago: not a single bit of information in any newspaper story or blog post contains one speck of new information. It’s all rehash of rumors that’s been going on for a very long time. If your search skills are good enough you can find news stories and message board rumors talking about this for years. You’ll find many people saying they have “sources” telling them information and then just rewording the rumors that are already out there. It’s the exact same with all the current news stories. Now it doesn’t mean that it won’t eventually happen, because the odds are good that at some point it will. But all these current stories are just like a meteorologist predicting rain enough times…eventually, they’ll be right.

The three stars of the game were
1. STJ – 17 Jerome Samson (g,3a)
2. STJ – 33 Michael Hutchinson (23 save shutout)
3. STJ – 18 Ben Chiarot (g,a)

The Sharkspage player of the game is Matt Pelech.

Even strength lines
Hamilton/Oleksuk/Hayes
Tarasov/Carpenter/DaSilva
Schwartz/Rau/Schmidt
Reid/Higgs/Pelech

Davison/Acolatse
Comrie/Doherty
DeMelo/Mueller

BOXSCORE

St. John’s 2 2 2 – 6
Worcester 0 0 0 – 0

1st Period-1, St. John’s, O’Dell 17 (Lipon, Samson), 11:56. 2, St. John’s, MacKinnon 12 (Chiarot), 14:15. Penalties-Mouillierat Stj (roughing), 5:26; Hill Stj (hooking), 17:12.

2nd Period-3, St. John’s, Lunden 4 (Samson, Hill), 11:13. 4, St. John’s, Chiarot 6 (Lipon, Samson), 13:58. Penalties-Doherty Wor (hooking), 0:10; Pelech Wor (cross-checking), 3:17; Riley Stj (hooking), 15:54; Carpenter Wor (hooking), 16:42.

3rd Period-5, St. John’s, Klingberg 22 (O’Dell, Hutchinson), 7:29 (PP). 6, St. John’s, Samson 26 (Lipon, Klingberg), 16:04. Penalties-Acolatse Wor (hooking), 6:56; Kichton Stj (elbowing), 18:36; Pelech Wor (roughing, roughing, misconduct – continuing altercation), 18:36.

Shots on Goal-St. John’s 8-11-9-28. Worcester 8-8-7-23.
Power Play Opportunities-St. John’s 1 / 5; Worcester 0 / 3.
Goalies-St. John’s, Hutchinson 16-5-1 (23 shots-23 saves). Worcester, Sateri 18-24-2 (28 shots-22 saves).
A-4,909
Referees-Darcy Burchell (42).
Linesmen-Todd Whittemore (70), Ed Boyle (81).