The Phantoms’ second game of the preseason — and their first will a fuller compliment of players sure to be their lineup regulars come the regular season — did not break for them in quite the way they would have hoped.
With a somewhat disjointed first two periods, and an uneven level of compete throughout them, the Phantoms found themselves having to work towards clawing their way back into this game in the third period, but with it taking them until the final two minutes of the period to break through on any of their chances, the comeback was pretty comfortably out of their reach, and they fizzled out, dropping this one by a 3-1 margin. But even in something of a lackluster effort from the mixed group of skaters, Phantoms rookie goaltender Carson Bjarnason held up well.
“I thought he was fine,” head coach John Snowden said postgame. “I thought he had quite a few scrambly d-zone situations where he made some pretty big saves for us. He looked confident, I had no problem with how he played tonight. I thought he looked like he was dialed in and he was ready, he was pretty steady in his net, with not a lot of movement, he was in the right time. First goal was a net front scramble and he got pushed out of it, so we gotta be ready to win the battle as that weak side [defender] that’s all by himself there, gotta be on our toes and getting that out. And a couple shots that I thought just got through traffic and the third goal, there was probably seven guys in front of the net, I don’t know if he even saw it. So I liked his game, I thought it was a good game by him.”
Stopping 19 of the 22 shots he faced on the night, it wasn’t the busiest of showings for him from a raw volume of chances perspective, but with 13 of those shots coming from inside the home plate area and a lot of traffic allowed to park itself in front of him throughout the night, it was still far from a cakewalk for him. But even in that, he did well to control what he could — battling as well as he could through traffic and remaining steady on the whole in his positioning — keeping solid in a game playing in front of a whole new defense group, comprised of a mix of players he’ll likely see a lot of this season, and some who will have their tickets back to Reading stamped before long.
“I think, you’re playing the position and your job is to just stop the puck and whoever we have in front of him is who we have in front of him,” Snowden went on, “And I think, you know, right now we’re figuring out the d-core as we go, who we’re gonna have and working through some injury stuff that’s happened, popped up in training camp with the Flyers. So you know we’re piecing that together but I think for him, his job is just to be in the net no matter who’s playing in front of him and his job is to stop the puck but I thought he did a good job of that tonight.”
Last night’s showing was, we must recall, just the very beginning of what’s sure to be a long and at times arduous season, and there’s much left for him to learn about the game at the professional level. The Phantoms will begin the regular season not at full power on their back end, having to work around the injuries to key players in Ethan Samson and Oliver Bonk, and this likely won’t be the only time they have to do a similar type of adjusting on the fly. But that Bjarnason was able to make his first impression as a player who can show up and play at a, at the very least, reasonably high level in the face of such flux and challenge, lays a foundation which offers a lot of promise for what he’ll be able to do as this long season wears on. There’s no promise of perfection here, the expectations remain reasonable, but all the same, he’s off to a very good start.
