March 1, 2007
By BRUCE BERLET, Courant Staff Writer
You could excuse the Wolf Pack if they felt as if they were playing the New Jersey Devils Wednesday night.
Pack assistant coach J.J. Daigneault joked it was more like the Montreal Canadiens he played for while winning the Stanley Cup in 1993.
"I made a career out of the way their defensemen [chipped] the puck out for 40 minutes," the 16-year NHL veteran said.
But the Lowell Devils also did a first-class impersonation of their NHL parent team, smothering the Pack in a 2-1 victory before 2,483 at the Civic Center.
"They're a trapping team, and it's tough to get in their zone and sustain pressure," said All-Star wing Ryan Callahan, the Pack's leading scorer who was on the ice with linemates Brandon Dubinsky and Dane Byers for both Lowell goals. "Our key has been getting a lot of shots on net, and we didn't do that, which was one of our flaws on the night.
"But they played their system perfectly. It's definitely frustrating, and sometimes you try to do the cuter things, and that definitely doesn't work against a trapping system. I think we played right into their hands. We've had success crashing the net, and tonight we really didn't do that. I don't know why."
The Pack averaged 37 shots while winning a season-high six in a row to cap a 19-4-1 run that lifted them from last to second. On Wednesday, they managed only nine shots in the first two periods and 22 for the game, one more than their season low.
The Pack (34-21-3-0) rarely got into their usually strong forechecking to put pressure on Jordan Parise, whose best saves came off two Nigel Dawes bids from the high slot in the second and third periods. And busted plays in a 4:08 span of the second enabled the Devils (29-23-5-2) to win their third in a row and sixth in seven starts, the only blemish being a 6-1 loss at home to the Pack on Friday.
"That was kind of an embarrassing loss, so we wanted to come back hard," former Pack defenseman Mike Mottau said. "It was a really good team effort. They forecheck pretty hard, and the defensemen did a pretty good job of handling it and finding the outlets."
After a bouncing puck eluded Pack defenseman Martin Richter near his blueline, Nicklaus Bergfors broke in 2-on-1 with Mike Pandolfo and shot wide. But the puck ricocheted into the slot, where Rod Pelley scored into an open net at 1:38 for his fifth of 12 goals against the Pack.
Lowell got the winner at 5:46 when Bergfors' shot deflected off the stick of Pack defenseman Dave Liffiton and the chest of Ryan Murphy and past Al Montoya (27 saves).
The Pack's Dwight Helminen won the ensuing faceoff to Ivan Baranka, whose pass deflected into the Devils' zone. Hugh Jessiman, recalled from Charlotte of the ECHL a week earlier, outraced Olli Malmivaara and beat Parise for his third goal in as many games.
Still, with veterans Brad Isbister and Jarkko Immonen with the Rangers, the youthful Pack couldn't crack the Devils' stifling trap for the equalizer.
"We've had a good run and played a lot of games," Daignealt said. "Not to find an excuse, but maybe fatigue is going to catch up to a team. We know the character of our team, but we knew this was going to be a tough game. You have to be proactive like we were in Lowell, but we had a hard time generating some offense out of our transition. But this game was unlike the Wolf Pack we've seen for the past 25 games, so we'll just put it behind us and refocus on the month of March."
