PORTLAND -- The Providence Bruins have remained remarkably consistent throughout the first half of the season, racking up the American Hockey League's best record, while the Portland Pirates have sought that trait for their own game.
Perhaps predictably, then, in a game where a "complete 60 minutes" is stressed in every dressing room across the continent, the more consistent Bruins twice erased 2-goal deficits to post a 4-3 shootout win over the Pirates at the Cumberland County Civic Center tonight.
Jeff Hoggan scored the clincher in the shootout, not long after scoring his 13th goal of the year with Providence shorthanded midway through the third period to help force overtime. The Atlantic Division-leading Bruins (27-5-2-0) capped off a 3-road-games-in-3-days trip with their third straight victory.
"As lousy as they probably felt going into this game, knowing how much energy they exterted, they found a way to get it done," Providence coach Scott Gordon said of his team, which also benefited from goals from Pascal Pelletier (league-leading 21st of the year) and checker Byron Bitz.
Portland (18-12-2-2) received first-period goals from Jason King and Brendan Mikkelson to open the early 2-0 lead, with Mikkelson netting his third of the year with the team on the power play. Geoff Platt's 15th of the year (11th with the Pirates) made it 3-1 for Portland in the first minute of the second period.
Then the Bruins went to work turning the momentum of the game, chipping away bit by bit, shift by shift.
"We haven't been in that situation too often," Gordon said of playing from behind. "But one of the things about our team, we've come pretty close to playing a full 60 minutes every night. For that reason, it might not be the first period, it might not be the second, but it might be in the third, we'll come up big.
"We're going to have a big period for ourselves, and our guys have gotten used to that."
Portland coach Kevin Dineen was left looking for more from his team.
"There a team that's played a lot of hockey in the past couple of days, and we didn't take advantage of that as well as we could have," Dineen said.
"We had our moments where we were playing a solid brand of hockey, and the trick is to try and keep that going through 60 minutes. We definitely had some consistency issues with that tonight."
Gerald Coleman stopped 29 shots for the Pirates, while counterpart and AHL-leading goaltender Tuukka Rask made 26 saves in the Providence nets.
For the complete game summary, click here.
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