Wings overcome sloppy play, beat Stealth

By Tom Hoffman

This was a game that, in recent years, the Philadelphia Wings would have found a way to lose. But this team, under Dave Huntley's guidance and the presence of some solid veteran leaders, is finding ways to pull these kind of games out. A sloppy second half that put the Wings behind 12-10 was righted with a five goal run in the fourth, allowing Philly to come away with a 16-13 win over a very physical San Jose Stealth squad in front of 11,737 at the Wachovia Center Friday evening.

Kyle Sweeney, who would earn Game MVP honors on the night, started the scoring for the Wings just 51 seconds into play. San Jose would score the next three goals to take a 3-1 while trying to best to pound the Wings into submission. The Wings would overcome the chippiness of the Stealth and score the game's next four goals, Jim Borell ending the scoring run with a breakaway score early in the second quarter. After the Stealth's Shaydon Santos cut the Wings lead to a goal, Athan Iannucci added two of his team high four goals on the night. His second goal angered San Jose keeper Anthony Cosmo, who proceeded to duke it out with Iannucci. This mini brawl would cost San Jose one of their top defenders as Eric Martin was ejected for being the third man in the altercation. Play did settle down and after a Geoff Snider goal made it 8-4 Wings, the Stealth scored the next two to make it an 8-6 game at half, the last one coming from Luke Wiles with 5 seconds remaining in the half.

After Wiles and Jake Bergey traded scores to open the third, San Jose went on to score the next three goals and five of six to go ahead 12-10 with 8:34 left in regulation. At this point, the sloppy Wings went away and the high powered offense woke up. Included in the Wings winning five goal run that made the score 15-12 were Iannucci's other two goals and the first goal as a Wing for newly acquired A. J. Shannon. Jeff Zywicki's fourth score of the night with 59 seconds left gave the Stealth a little bit of hope but the final nail in this game would be driven home by their former goalie Rob Blasdell. While Blasdell made 41 saves, he did something that he once did to the Wings (12-1-01 at Albany) and that no Wings goalie had done as a Wing. Blasdell lobbed the ball into an empty San Jose net to cap off the scoring for the evening and give the Wings their seventh win of the 2008 season, which is one more win than the 2007 squad earned.

Next for the Wings is a visit to Trenton, NJ's Sovereign Bank Arena and a rematch with a surprisingly tough New York Titans team.