The Phantoms kicked off their weekend back-to-back last night with a wild one. The first of two games against the visiting Hartford Wolf Pack, the Phantoms were able to jump out to an early lead, capitalizing on a strong start, and chasing the Hartford goaltender from the game with two goals in just over five minutes.
That goaltending change, though, did spark something for the Wolf Pack, and between an extra bit of jump mustered on their side and a few key mistakes made by the Phantoms, this turned into a much more back and forth affair than it was initially looking like it would be — the Wolf Pack capitalized on one breakdown and one bit of bad luck in the first period to tie things up, and when the Phantoms rallied in the second to put up another pair and completely restore their lead, the Wolf Pack matched them in the back half of the frame. Now, the team did well to lock things down in the third period to at least guarantee themselves one standings point for getting out of regulation, but between a couple of missed opportunities in overtime and the toss-up of a 12-round shootout really working to its full capacity, the Phantoms still ended up falling short.
It was, in all, a disappointing result for the fact that the Phantoms did have control of this game for large portions of it, but after an even tougher loss on Wednesday to Providence, last night did see the Phantoms pretty notably rebounding and making some positive strides in terms of their complete underlying process.
“I did think that we did a lot of good things in the game,” head coach John Snowden acknowledged after the game. “I thought our start was good. You know, obviously we did get out quickly, get two. You know, I didn’t like the first goal on our coverage, and that it’s a long shot. We talked about it before the game, that they shoot from distance and they’re going to have traffic at our net, so we got to make sure that we do a better job of being patient in the on our weak-side winger so we can put ourselves in that lane, and then just making sure we clear that net-front and getting sticks… I guess the big one, the big goal for me, was the 4-on-4 at the end of the period. That’s, you know, we have clear possession, there’s 19 seconds left, we we have to have a guy back and understand who’s on the ice — with Fix-Wolansky, [that’s] a guy that likes to hang behind plays at times — and you got to understand that and we can’t send that puck from where we are. Just understanding the situation of the game. We got a 4-3 lead, we have the puck with 19 seconds left in a 4-on-4 situation. Just pull up, hold up, hold it in the o-zone. We’ll play in the o-zone for 19 seconds and then we’re out of there, and we’re, you know, and we’ll probably finish the game where we’re at, [with] a 4-3 game. That’s the way it finishes. But there was some there were some bright spots in the game. There was some moments where we beat ourselves again.”
It’s true, there really were some positive moments in this game, where the team was clicking well offensively, to be sure, but even more critically, moments when the team really looked like they had taken Snowden’s criticisms from Wednesday’s game to heart, and renewed their commitment to playing a hard and focused game. That is, the Phantoms (particularly the forwards) came up with some huge shot blocks, showing their willingness to go for a hard play and eat a shot when they needed to, and this helped their defensive efforts both at even strength and, critically, on the power play. And on the other side of things, it was a real positive to see how much more offense they were able to generate from making physical plays, and not being afraid to put their heads down and playing through their opponents, in emphasizing attacking to the net and getting themselves to the right spots for their chances much more frequently. It was good step, but it wasn’t everything.
“I thought that we did a lot of good things,” Snowden went on. “We controlled a lot of play. We generated some chances. We missed some chances. But that’s the game, and that’s kind of where we’re at right now. We just we got to we got to stop those moments where we beat ourselves and we put ourselves in the situation we’re in. You know, the 4-on-4 play, even the third goal, [where] we get extended in the d-zone, and we don’t win a battle, and we don’t shrink on it, and we don’t win that puck to get it out and then when it gets out, we don’t have our sticks inside, we have our box-outs at the net-front and we just come off our box- out and leave a guy all alone on the backside and it ends up in our net. And you know, those are the things that we just, when you’re tired and your brain isn’t getting any oxygen anymore, you just got to fall back on your structure. And more times than not, you just got to protect the interior of the rink and protect your net-front. And we came off of it on that one.”
Situational awareness has been a particular weak point for this team for much of the season, and while there are certainly times when teams can get away with lapses in this area, they’re at a point where these lapses have built up to such a degree that it seems they’ve expended all of their luck and everything is blowing up on them in the worst ways.
Otter 🎯🎯🎯🎯 pic.twitter.com/7QBZU6t1re
— Hartford Wolf Pack (@HWPHockey) March 1, 2026
At the risk of seeming like we’re piling on just a couple of players here — we should acknowledge that they were not the only offenders in this one — that fourth goal against really was the perfect example of that kind of effect.
The Phantoms were primed to get a great look late in the second period, sprung on a rush and with one of their better shooter in Alex Bump carrying the puck, but this turned into a costly breakdown because they went all-in on this play at the wrong time. Bump holds on to the puck too long and decides to shoot from a severe angle, and when he misses the net, the Wolf Pack, already cheating for their next chance, are primed to jump on the loose puck, and with Helge Grans going way too deep on the initial rush, the Wolf Pack are left open for an odd-man rush, and they made the Phantoms pay.
Now, Bump does have a strong enough shot that it’s well over a non-zero chance that he could pull off a goal from that spot, but it’s a risky play, trying to win the game with 19 seconds remaining in the second period, and that’s a level of risk that the coaching staff is working on getting him to manage.
What’s more, it’s a little nebulous, but the team just doesn’t have the good luck banked right now to make that risk wholly justifiable. It’s going to take quite a few more positive shifts and games stacked to get back to that point.
Of course, while it was a few poor shifts, a bit of unwise decision making that sank the Phantoms here, and given where they’re at in their season and the standings it’s impossible not to acknowledge them, but despite the disappointing outcome and that handful of ugly blips, this was one of the better games we’ve seen from the Phantoms from a process standpoint in a bit.
“Well, I think a lot of it is puck battles and getting interior. I think we’re delivering pucks at the right times, we’re going to the net-front. I mean, [Eklind’s] goal is not a pretty goal, but that’s the types of goals you need to score at this time of year, is being willing to go to the net front. You know, I think, the second goal [Pederson] smashes one off the rush and ends up in the net. And, you know, little things like that are just, even [Kaplan’s] goal, like that’s just a hard goal. We take a puck to the net, we drive to the net, and it ends up going in. Those are the types of things that, when you need offense and you need to score, you have to go to the hard areas to do that. Sometimes it’s going to hurt, but at the end of the day, if it ends up in the net, everybody’s happy, everybody’s giving you a hug, and and we’re moving on from that. So, we got to continue to do those things, and then just, we got to lock it down. We’ve scored four again. We got to lock it down defensively. We got to make suret hat we don’t have those moments where we just beat ourselves.”
Snowden has said it before, and it bears repeating, that when a team scores four goals or more in a game (as they’ve now done for the last four games) they have a chance to win every time. they’re getting closer to where they need to be, giving themselves more run support, and that makes a difference. it’s not been perfect, but this was a nice bit of incremental improvement, and now the next challenge is to find a way to keep building on that.
