WBS Penguins Take on Crunch

The big guy always picks on the little guy it seems right?

The WBS Pentuins take on the Syracuse Crunch tonight at the Mohegan Sun Arena at Csey Plaza. Faceoff is set for 7:05 p.m. EST.

It's Ryan Craig Bobblehead night which means it should be a packed house for the WBS debut of forward Cal O'Reilly, who practiced with some of his new teammates during yesterday's optional skate. I expect O'Reilly to take Nick Petersen's spot in the lineup, who didn't play much after the first period during Thursday night's wild 7-6 win over Manchester.

Here's my best guess at possible lines for tonight. I'll update them during the warmups over on the Twitter side.

Bryan Lerg - Ben Street - Jason Williams
Colin McDonald - Cal O'Reilly - Brian Gibbons
Paul Thompson - Ryan Craig - Geoff Walker
Brandon DeFazio - Zach Sill - Cody Chupp

For the Crunch, Kyle Palmieri has been a Penguin killer all season long. It will be important for WBS to keep tabs on him all night. Patrick Maroon and former WBS forwards J.F Jacques and Luca Caputi have also fared well against the Penguins. Iiro Tarrki got the loss against Albany lst night, so the Pens could see Antero Nittymaki in net for the Crunch tonight.

For the Penguins, it's simple. Continue to win and keep pace in the division. With Brad Thiessen in Pittsburgh, it's Scott Munroe's show. Not sure if the Thiessen move is permanent with trade rumors picking up, leading to Mondays trade deadline.

After tonight's game with the Crunch, the Penguins finish the weekend before a week long break with a 3:05 p.m. tilt tilt against the Norfolk Admirals.

After this weekends games I will have a live blog on Monday as well as twitter updates with any moves affecting the WBS Penguins and other prominent AHL teams in the conference.