The numbers tell an alarming story.
Just how bad have the Phantoms' scoring woes been? Pretty darn bad.
Through Thursday, the Phantoms scored 35 goals. No other team had less than 45.
Lowell, who leads the East Division, has scored more than twice as many goals as Adirondack.
Eleven teams have scored more than 60 goals through Friday, and 23 of the league's 29 teams have 50 or more.
Part of that is due to the fact that the Phantoms have played a league-low 17 games through Thursday.
But at a less than 2.2 goals-per-game clip, they'll need more than a few games in hand to climb out of the league's scoring cellar. The Phantoms have scored six goals in their last six games and have been shutout twice.
Of course, you can't score if you don't shoot. The Phantoms have registered a league-low total of shots heading into the weekend.
With Jared Ross, Andreas Nodl and Oskars Bartulis in Philadelphia, players currently on the Phantoms' roster have accounted for 27 goals.
And Jon Matsumoto has seven of those.
The good news...
So how did a team with that poor of an offensive mark come into the week with a winning record, only three points out of the division's final playoff spot?
By not allowing many goals against. Before Thursday's blowout in Binghamton, Adirondack and Hershey were tied, allowing a league-low 40 goals.
Again, part of that is due to the fact they've played the fewest games, but like the scoring situation, it doesn't explain it all.
The Phantoms have gotten fairly strong goaltending from Johan Backlund, and the young defensive core has done a good job.
Following a 3-1 loss to Wilkes-Barre/Scranton last Saturday, Jonathan Bombulie, a longtime AHL reporter for the Citizens' Voice wrote this on his blog:
"On paper, it looks to me like the Phantoms should score and give up a lot of goals. They have a bunch of talented guys up front (Jon Matsumoto, Nodl, Pat Maroon, Ross, Krys Kolanos) and a bunch of D (Joonas Lehtivuori, Kevin Marshall, Marc-Andre Bourdon, Logan Stephenson) and G (Johan Backlund, Nic Riopel) I've never heard of. Yet the results so far have been the exact opposite."
Good to hear someone else say what we've been observing for a while.
If the offense were to come around, a task made more difficult by recent callups, you figure this is a team that should win some games.
That crazy schedule
In the 24 days before Thanksgiving, the Phantoms played six games. In the next 24, they play 12 times.
Name that line
On Monday night against the Colorado Avalanche, the Flyers used an all-Adirondack line of Nodl/Ross/Laliberte. That prompted the Philadelphia media and the team's broadcasters to try out several different names for the bunch.
I heard, "the Adirondack Line," the "Adirondack Connection," and the less flatteringly, "the Triple-A line."
We can do better than those. Anyone have a better idea? You know where to send it.
Tim McManus covers the Adirondack Phantoms for The Post-Star. He may be reached at tmcmanus@poststar.com. Check out the Phantoms blog on www.poststar.com, or follow him on Twitter (@PSPhantoms).
Posted in Sports on Friday, November 27, 2009 11:50 pm Updated: 12:44 am. | Tags: Phantoms
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