Through the Binghamton Senators 2012 calendar portion of the 2012-2013 season the team finds it’s self at an impressive 19-7-1-2 through 29 games. With games in hand on almost every team in the American Hockey League & the Syracuse Crunch being the only team the B-Sens haven’t been able to dominate in every of 5 games played against the Interstate 81 foe; many things are going right for the B-Sens this season.
Coming into this season no one would have assumed that first year Head Coach Luke Richardson and the second youngest team (22.93 yrs) in the American Hockey League would be where they are in the standings, 2nd in the East Division & East Conference with 41 points just 4 points behind the league best Syracuse Crunch with 3 game in hand.
So much talk has been given and well deserved credit to players like Jakob Silfverberg (13+13=26), Andre Benoit (9+12=21), Mike Hoffman (7+12=19), Robin Lehner (12-4-0-1 1.88 GAA .944%) & the much improved play of Derek Grant (5 shorthanded goals) and the teams league lead in that same category with 9 shorties on the season. But without a complete effort by all players on the team, including role players the B-Sens would not be where they are on January 1st, 2013.
So what is the definition of a role player? According to thefreedictionary.com: “A team athlete who plays mainly in specific situations” In hockey we know that role players maybe enforcers, big time check artists, agitators, an energy player and unfortunately a lot of 3rd line and 4th line players will get tagged with that role player tag. In a recent 1st intermission interview that the Voice of the Binghamton Senators, Grady Whittenburg did with B-Sens 3rd year pro and 4th liner Corey Cowick, Corey talked about how he did not want to labeled as a role player this season and that he wanted to contribute more to this team then just provide rest for the other 3 lines.
And with this team this season, role players for the Binghamton Senators are doing just that, scoring goals, important goals for the B-Sens.
Corey Cowick at this point through 28 games played is just 1 point away from his 11 point (5+6) season of last year in 53 games played. On a line with American Hockey League veteran, Hugh Jessiman (6+8=14) & rookie Jean-Gabriel Pageau (2+7=9), Corey was well rewarded for his continued improvement in his game this season with a game winning goal vs. Rochester this past Saturday night beating Amerks goaltender, David Leggio at the 6:00 mark of the 1st period. The 4th line tandem at this point has a 33 point contribution for the B-Sens with 3 GWG’s between Jessiman’s 2 and Cowick’s most recent GWG in Rochester.
The 3rd line for the B-Sens has also seen two players step up and score important and exciting goals for the B-Sens as well. More recently Shane Prince (6+4=10), Cole Schneider (4+7=11) with Pat Cannone (5+5=10) have been teamed up together for the B-Sens and you can see the results starting to happen for two rookies. In a recent game at the Times Union Center in Albany, NY on Friday, December 28th Schneider scored two goals for the B-Sens in a game that only saw 2 shots on goal in 1st period and 3 shots on goal for the young Senators team in the 3rd period. Schneider’s 2nd goal of the game, the 1st shot in the 3rd period of the game tied the game up at 2 before Silfverberg late tally won the game for the B-Sens. Schneider also won a game for the B-Sens during the team’s 9 game winning streak as he scored the 2nd goal of the game vs. the Bridgeport Soundtigers on home ice on the annual Thanksgiving Day game.
Rochester NY native, Shane Prince was probably going to see a lot of time in Elmira this season playing with the Jackals as the B-Sens roster on paper might not have had much room for the rookie this season. However with sidelined players like Andre Petersson & Mika Zibanejad; Prince has been able to work on his game including contributing with 6 goals and 4 assists. Prince has been a big part of winning games for the B-Sens as well with the game winning tally vs. Wilkes Barre/Scranton on home ice as the team came from 3-0 deficit with 4 unanswered goals including the rookies first game winning goal of his career.
Role players may play on the 3rd and 4th lines but when the B-Sens role out 6 guys with 26 goals, 38 assists for 64 points & 7 game winning goals on those two lines through 29 games, then most definitely you can say that the six including 3 rookies are more then just role players but an important part to Coach Luke Richardson‘s offensive attack.
And wouldn’t you say the best role of any role player would be the underrated “secondary scoring” role on any team? The 3.31 goals for, 2nd place, 41 point & barely 23 years old Binghamton Senators team would certainly think so.
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