Phantoms drop chippy Game 2, will face elimination on Wednesday

What can we say, folks? The Phantoms had themselves A Night, and after dropping a Game 2 in Hershey which swiftly got out of hand on them, they face elimination already as the series moves back to Allentown on Wednesday.

The Basics

First period: 4:47- Ethen Frank (Snively, McIlrath), 8:18- Ethen Frank (Snively, Priskie), 18:45- Hunter McDonald (Brooks, Grans)

Second period: 4:48- Henrick Rybinski (Trineyev, Strome), 15:24- Alex Limoges (Lapierre, Frank)PPG

Third period: 16:30- Hendrix Lapierre (Trineyev)EN

SOG: 31 (LV) - 16 (HER)

Some Takeaways

Self-fulfilling prophecy

There were a number of lessons to be taken from their play in Game 1, and chiefly among them was that the Phantoms would need to shore up how they\'re beginning their games. In a conversation with team broadcaster Bob Rotruck -- replayed during the first intermission -- captain Garrett Wilson noted that the team\'s play on the whole was pretty good, but in this next meeting they have \"gotta find a way to come out a little harder and not spot them one early.\" He was right on the mark with that comment, but unfortunately knowing what you have to do is one thing, and actually executing on it is another thing entirely.

Because the Phantoms did come out for this one with some jump, and managed to put together an early offensive flurry, and things were looking promising for them for a little while, right up until a just brutal turnover in the defensive zone turned into a goal for Ethen Frank to get the Bears on the board before we even hit the five minute mark. A real deflating moment, to say the least.

A note on discipline

One of the emerging themes in this game was of the Phantoms not being to get out of their own way in some regards. This applies to the first ugly turnover we\'ve mentioned already (and more that we\'ll talk about later), but it also applies to the stream of penalties that the Phantoms seemingly could not stop themselves from taking.

All told, the Phantoms came away from this one with 88 penalty minutes (more on that later), but excluding misconducts and any offsetting nonsense, we\'re still left with seven minors, and seven opportunities given to the most efficient power play in this division.

And we\'ll give them some credit, the penalty kill did good work overall tonight, only allowing one goal on those seven attempts. But the fact remains that when you\'re already down on the scoresheet, you cannot also fall victim to undisciplined penalties and lazy stick infractions. They may have been able to limit the Bears\' scoring on the man-advantage, but putting them there in the first place, and so many times, was a serious hinderance to their comeback hopes.

One good thing

We\'ll take a detour away from lamenting what went wrong in this game to note one thing that did go well. The Phantoms didn\'t get much scoring going in this one, and their one goal that they did score came from a somewhat unexpected place.

https://twitter.com/LVPhantoms/status/1786906632267485444

Hunter McDonald, not historically known for his offensive production and not having been a huge factor in this area since turning pro this spring, was the lone Phantom who was able to get on the board tonight, picking up his first professional goal in the process. And in some ways, it\'s tough to see such milestones come in losses like this one, somehow their luster gets diminished, but it\'s still worth tossing a nod of recognition.

Self-fulfilling prophecy (the redux)

It turns out that we\'re not done talking about accidentally foreboding quotes from the Phantoms, and this time, the quote comes from their coach. After Game 1, Phantoms head coach Ian Laperriere spoke about the importance of creating high danger chances and taking care of your own crease in turn. \"The series will be decided by the net-front battles. They won one more in Game 1.\" he told Rotruck , and this turned out to be pretty prescient.

As the shot total listed in the stats section told us, the Phantoms actually got the better of the shot share in this game by a pretty comfortable margin. They did well limiting the raw amount of offense generated -- indeed, the Bears had just two shots on goal in the third period, and the second didn\'t come until Lapierre\'s empty net goal -- but the quality is what mattered more, and what did them in. Again, the Phantoms were held largely to putting shots on goal from the outside -- just seven of their 31 shots (including their one goal) came from the high danger area of the ice. And on the flip side, nine of the Bear\'s 16 shots (including three of their goals) came from the high danger area. The Phantoms struggled with their puck management in and around the crease, were hindered by turnovers, and were burned by them in the end.

Rough stuff

One more note before we go, and we won\'t beleaguer the point: this game got pretty out of hand emotionally pretty quickly. With just under three minutes remaining in regulation, a post-whistle scrum that managed to stop just short of an all out line brawl resulted in 10 players (everyone on the ice at the time) being ejected. With three seconds left in regulation, Ronnie Attard and Jimmy Huntington got into a bit of a scrap, were tossed, and brought us up to 12 ejections.

And we note this just because it\'s certainly something to keep an eye on as we head into Game 3 in Allentown. The teams will have four days to cool off, but who knows if that one will get out of hand as well. It\'s been a chippy series so far, and we\'ll see how it goes the rest of the way through.

Talking Points