Panthers 3 | Avalanche 0

Tomas Vokoun picked up a shutout tonight, while Jassen Cullimore left the game in the first period with an "upper body injury". Peltonen, Campbell and Dvorak had another great game together and Zednik and Frolik played quite well together, too. Frolik, by the way, took a puck to the face after getting beat out on an icing call, but he came back quickly and played a very strong game. And then Keith Ballard: the hip check is always risky and he pulled it off twice tonight, though the latter drew a 'clipping' penalty and an extra minor for unsportsmanlike conduct (Michael Frolik served that one). A few minutes after the hit and some pushing and shoving beside the Avalanche bench, Tarnasky and Ian Laperriere dropped the gloves.

Hits were even at 14 and shots were 24-23 for the Panthers, while the first two goals were notable for a couple different reasons: Brett McLean redirected a centering feed from Nick Tarnasky and put it into the net for his first goal of the season. It took him 32 games to get one in, but better late than never. As for the second goal, it was just a beautiful play by Richard Zednik skating in, cutting to his right and then as he skated past Budaj, he held the puck on his backhand to draw the goaltender out of position and then he roofed the backhand shot to give the Panthers a 2-0 lead.

AP Recap

Individual Stats

Boxscore

Meanwhile, Rochester is taking on the 16-7-3-3 Grand Rapids Griffins at the moment. The Amerks are trailing 4-0 through two periods. Mike Brodeur has faced 21 shots, while Rochester has put up 26.

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I'm going to be busier than usual over the next couple days, so any weekly prospect update (assuming I still manage to put one together) will probably be pretty short or maybe just limited to stats only. Sorry about that, but we'll see what happens.