SACO — After a light few weeks to open the season, the Portland Pirates are faced this weekend with their first three-games-in-three-days set.
“From a preparation standpoint, you have to look at three different teams, as far as watching them and understanding what we’re dealing with,” Edwards said. “But most of that work is done now, and we’ll have meetings every day to talk about them.”
The Pirates open with a pair of home games — one each against Manchester and Springfield — and close with a road tilt against the Providence Bruins on Sunday afternoon.
“The biggest thing for us, is different personnel on each team,” Edwards said. “You have to get to know the different players, especially in special teams situations. With guys getting called up, you don’t always know who’s going to be in the lineup. I think we have a good idea how those teams play. It’s a matter of whether they made any tweaks to their systems at all.”
The Pirates are coming off a see-saw victory at Worcester on Sunday, their second in three days over the struggling Sharks.
“Structurally we were really good,” Edwards said. “Three of the four goals were right off a form of structure — executing our forecheck, executing a faceoff or whatever. Having five guys play together, we scored three goals.”
What Edwards was hoping to see was a bit more pep in the team’s step.
“That was their third game in three days, we had a day off, to me our pace could have been better, we could have been a lot quicker,” Edwards said. “Our execution coming our of our zone wasn’t great. There’s always stuff to work on.”
The Pirates will need that jump against Friday’s opponent. The Manchester Monarchs are 10-2-1-2 with 23 points. The Los Angeles Kings’ affiliate leads the Eastern Conference by four points over Syracuse, and six over Saturday night’s opponent, the Springfield Falcons, the AHL affiliate of the Columbus Blue Jackets.
“(Manchester) plays fast,” Edwards said. “You have to play fast against them. They’re a team that likes to have the puck, so we have to find a way to keep the puck more. When they have the puck, they’re dynamic off the rush, they’re a dynamic transition team, and if you turn the puck over to them, they’re going to hurt you.”
One thing the Pirates will have going this weekend is a plethora of goaltending, and a nearly-full roster. After sending Mike Lee to Gwinnett of the ECHL for a conditioning stint after a lower-body injury, the Coyotes reassigned the keeper to the Pirates this week. He joins Mark Visentin and Louis Domingue on the active roster.
“You don’t want to throw (Lee) right back in. You want to give him a chance to go there under a different situation where he doesn’t have to have the pressure,” Edwards said. “He can go down there, work on his stuff and get feeling good.
“He did a good job, had a good win. He played well, and the team won, so that’s good.”
Edwards also said that the team may consider playing all three goaltenders.
“This weekend we have all three, and we maybe have an opportunity to have all three guys start,” Edwards said. “It’s a unique situation, because they’re all guys who can play in the league, and it forms some really good, in-house competition. But it’s not ideal for them, because everybody wants to play. It’s a little bit of a struggle to find enough nets for everybody right now. It’s a good problem for us, for sure.”
The Coyotes also sent forward Chris Brown, who had two goals against Worcester on Sunday, back to the Pirates after a three-day recall to the Coyotes.
Send questions/comments to the editors.
