Strong goaltending sparks Admirals' win

NORFOLK

Wilkes-Barre/Scranton has one of the best teams in the AHL and will be one of the favorites to claim the Calder Cup.

The Norfolk Admirals aren't going anywhere.

On Saturday, however, it looked like there were two heavyweight teams as the Admirals outdueled the Penguins 2-1 in a riveting, "Where has this been?" performance before 4,539 at Scope.

Brandon Bochencki's team-leading 27th goal early in the second period held up as the game-winner. But the player of the game was clearly backup goalie Craig Kowal-

ski, who turned in a sparkling 37-save effort to earn No. 1-star honors.

"Our goalie was awesome," Admirals coach Darren Rumble said. "He made all the easy (saves) look easy, but he made a lot of great ones, too."

The Admirals (29-35-3-5) also displayed a voracious attack that kept Penguins goalie Adam Berkhoel under siege most of the night. Although they scored only twice, they rang at least four shots off the goal frame and forced Berkhoel to be almost Kowalski's equal to keep the Penguins in it.

"Everybody could have had one (goal) and a couple of guys could have had two," Rumble said. "Take away the first 11 or so minutes of the first period and we were the better team."

Norfolk's Justin Keller opened the scoring in spectacular fashion. With the Admirals shorthanded, Keller made a steal in his own end, broke in two-on-one with Pete Zingoni and snapped a shot past Berkhoel at 11:01 of the first period.

Keller now has points in his last 13 home games.

Mark Letestu got the equalizer for the Penguins (43-23-2-2) a little more than six minutes later, and it stayed that way until the 3:52 mark of the second period when Bochenski fired from the top of the circle and threw a shot past a screened Berkhoel.

"Our guys played for pride, for their jobs and for the fans," Rumble said.