For the Lehigh Valley Phantoms, the whiplashing they’ve been delivering over these last few weeks continues. The Phantoms kicked off their slate of action for this week on Wednesday with a matchup against the best in the Atlantic Providence Bruins, and despite the difficulty of the task in front of them, the Phantoms were coming into it with a good bit of momentum. The previous weekend had seen them pull off a pair of quite convincing wins over another tough divisional opponent in Hershey, and beginning to look like they might finally be turning the corner in their adherence to their process, but while the Phantoms had an opportunity in front of them to build on those strong showings and perhaps take advantage of the third string goalie (albeit a strong one, all things considered) that the Bruins were icing, instead what they delivered was a flat start, an early deficit fallen into, and despite finding their way well enough to come back from down 4-1 to get within one goal, a period of poor decision making saw things break down again and get away from them in the end.
It was yet another game where they were able to get themselves right there, to make it close enough to sting, but lacked the finish. It’s a frustrating pattern, as it’s costing them wins and chances to chip away at their place in the standings, and the continued lapses that simply should not be happening are weighing heavily on their coaching staff.
“I hated our start,” head coach John Snowden said postgame. “I thought we were slow, I don’t think we were hard, we weren’t abrasive against a team that’s big, heavy, and hard, that’s pretty much the first thing that we talked about. Yeah so I thought the second period, yeah we did some good things in the second period. I thought our pace looked better, I thought we put pucks into better spaces so we could forecheck and get some o-zone [time] against them, because that’s the one area of the game where I thought we could find some offense is turning pucks over on the forecheck, it’s something we saw in video that gave us some chance to create o-zone, they’re a very good defensive team. You know, I thought we did some good things but then we break down… When we start to get some momentum, we start to press, we start to do some things, we start to have the puck on our stick way more than we did in the first period, we just make bad decisions and it ends up in our net, and that’s just the way it was.”
This was another game when the Phantoms managed to overcome some of their early struggles, which is admirable in some ways, to snap themselves back into focus and really bear down, and show that their resilience can help them overcome a lot, can drive them to be able to hang, at least for a time, with some of the very best teams in their conference. But for whatever reason, that’s too often not a model or level that they can stick with all the way through to the final buzzer — things start working for them and they let back off the gas, start making softer plays, or making lapses in judgement, and maybe at times they’re getting a little unlucky in how things are blowing up on them (a double deflection goal against in the third period rings as a major example of this), but the blowups are still largely deserved.
“Like in the third period, I thought, again, we started out well,” Snowden went on. “We got two quick ones on them, all of a sudden it’s a 4-3 game, we lose a wall battle. We talk about all of the things that we’ve got to make sure they don’t get in the o-zone, boom, we lose a net-front battle, don’t get a block at the top, it ends up in our net. Next one, we lose a wall battle, don’t protect the inside, ends up in our net. Those are things we literally laid out in the pre-scout, and you can’t… like we know that’s gonna happen, they attack, and it ends up in our net, and all of a sudden it’s a 4-3 game turns into a 6-3 game and there we are.”
It feels, in some ways, an obvious statement that these matchups at the pro level are never going to be easy, and that a consistent level of effort and engagement with the more difficult elements of the game are what’s required to string together wins at this level, but this is a lesson that this Phantoms team seems to have needed reminding of time and again, it’s been a difficult mindset to make stick, to engrain to the point of becoming automatic for them. The coaching staff is hammering these points home, through the games and their preparations leading up to them, but it’s this same periodic aversion to making the hard plays that’s sinking them. Even if it’s just a matter of getting away from that for just a few minutes in these games, these opponents are good enough where that’s all they need to make them pay.
“The things that we practice during the week,” he continued, “and things I thought we did excellent when we were in Hershey, we just didn’t do it today. Those two last ones for me are just, that’s just structure breakdowns, that’s just not returning inside, that’s not letting a team play through you and in you. Like everybody needs to get inside to score. That’s just the way the game works, right, and we don’t get a block at the top, you watch the other side of it, we’re shooting from the top, and their forwards block everything. We can do the same thing. We all have the same equipment, we all have the same stuff, nothing’s different, no one’s got better equipment to block a shot, we have to eat some of those shots… We have to do the hard things to win. Block a shot is a hard thing. Winning a wall battle is a hard thing. Playing through somebody that’s bigger and stronger than you, those are hard things. In order to win, you have to do those things, and you have to do them consistently.”
In this Providence team — who has been on another level this season, hovering around an .800 points percentage for much of the season — the Phantoms have a blueprint for how they have to play the game if they want to find more sustained success. But of course, what drives the most frustration around the team is that they don’t even need to look outward, across the other side of the ice, for this blueprint, because they’ve demonstrated all on their own that they’re capable of looking downright unstoppable when they recommit themselves to playing hard and completely within their structure.
“If we want to play like we did last weekend,” he concluded, “we give ourselves a chance against anybody. I don’t care who you are, I don’t care what the team is, I don’t care how they’re made up, when we play like we did last week, and we were tight, we were physical, we were abrasive, we didn’t back down from anything, there was no space ever in that game, if we play like that, we’re hard to play against and we are gonna give ourself a chance to win every single game.”
But perhaps, in all of this, the same reason for frustration right now is also a reason for optimism. That is, there are no mysteries at work here as it relates to how the team needs to play in order to remain competitive. There is no need to search around for answers, the answers are laid out plain in front of them. This isn’t a team that’s outmatched in skill nor in preparation, so all that remains is execution. They’re finally finding their scoring game with more consistency — and it’s worth emphasizing that putting up four goals on one of the stingiest teams in the league is no small feat — and that helps, and the final piece remaining to bring this all together is a more concerted effort to remain attentive to their details, and a greater willingness to play a hard game. This team remains, in all, masters of their own fate.
This weekend will be a big one then, in terms of both answering the call from their coach and showing that they can be dedicated to playing the right way, but also much more tangibly, as they have two games on deck against a — dare we say — very beatable Hartford team, who’s sitting last in the division and has just three wins in their last 10 games. The final two months of the regular season are creeping up quickly, and the margin for error is growing even more narrow. The team can’t afford to keep leaving critical standings points on the table, but if there was ever a prime opportunity to jump start a more productive run, it lies in front of them now.
