The Phantoms, with a record of 4-2-1 and a third in the division points percentage through their first seven games of the season, are off to one of their more productive starts to a season since their relocation to the Lehigh Valley, but the road to get to this point hasn’t been an easy one.
In their busiest week in the schedule to date — that is, their first week with three games on the schedule — the Phantoms faced a wild bit of volatility in both play and results. Coming off of a huge sweep over the Cleveland Monsters, the Phantoms had the brakes thrown on in a pretty major way in another disjointed and frustrated loss to the Penguins on Wednesday. The top team in the league, the Penguins have given them some real trouble in their first two matchups of the season (both 4-1 losses for the Phantoms), but credit to them, the Phantoms didn’t let things spiral on them, and got right back in the win column against their next biggest division rival in the Bears on Friday.
It was a game that, for all of the momentum that putting up a well-fought 5-4 win gave them, could have gotten away from them on a couple of occasions, though their best efforts were able to prevent that from playing out. And in head coach John Snowden’s assessment delivered to media postgame, he acknowledged a host of positives he saw in this effort, a hard-working game driven by the example laid by his more veteran fourth line.
“They were just relentless. They worked hard, they were over pucks, they got through guys, anytime it turned over, their steps were hard back towards our end and got above guys quickly and then turned it right back around in their end. And they just played a heavy, relentless game. That’s exactly what I think this young team needs to see, is that’s some guys, [Wisdom and Wilson] that’s been around for a while, [Robertson] came into the lineup and he made a good impact for us, just how hard it is to win in this league and how hard it is to compete in this league, and that line set the tempo for us.”
The boost that this line was able to bring the Phantoms offensively — to the tune of three goals combined for — was certainly a welcome impact, but it was also a nice reward for the sound underlying work they were doing all night. Them being able to jump in an contribute some scoring has a positive secondary impact of taking some of the pressure off of the younger, top of the lineup players to find any way to produce in their own challenging matchups, but the primary strength was in their ability to create space, stay on the right side of the puck, and remain responsible in their approach to their matchups, which made them a well-defined blueprint to follow. These were not easy games on their schedule this week, but they managed to pull together some positive results in the back half of it, as well as a process which highlighted more positives than negatives.
“That’s a conversation we had at the end that this division is hard.” Snowden went on, “No one quits, everyone’s gonna play until the final buzzer, especially Hershey… but we stuck with it. Did we have some adverse moments? Sure. Did they carry the play some of the time? I think they did. I thought we had our moments as well, we capitalized on chances that were in Grade-A areas, I thought we had a ton of chances that we just missed on as well, but like I said to the team at the end of the game is that this is awesome for us right now, this is a really good thing to be stressed into [learning] how to win in tough games, and learn how to play against teams different teams. You know, you go from Wilkes-Barre to Hershey, it’s a very different team, you have to play different ways to beat those teams. So I like the adversity that we’re having early, especially with a young group so we can continue to learn and continue to push as the season goes on.”
The Phantoms weren’t able to complete a sweep for the second weekend in a row, as the Bears took the rematch on Saturday in the shootout, but what was most encouraging in this effort for the Phantoms was that they didn’t allow their overall level of play to dip in any sort of hangover from a big win the night before. They still had some difficult sequences mixed in, as can still be expected, but the team has done well to take in the lessons imparted on them by the bumps in the road, and by the way that their veteran players chiefly are rising above them. It’s going to be a long road, still, to perfectly smoothing out their process, but as they keep chipping away at it, learning to play the right way, the initial returns are, in many ways, even more promising than we would have dreamed.
