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WILKES-BARRE TWP. — As a long-time veteran of five AHL teams, John Muse has won a bunch of games at minor league hockey’s top level.
On Friday, he finally won one for the Wilkes-Barre/Scranton Penguins.
Muse stopped all 32 shots against him and Ryan Haggerty one-timed a power play goal, lifting the Penguins out of a three-week funk and to a 1-0 victory over the Cleveland Monsters at Mohegan Sun Arena.
“It’s awesome,” said the 30-year-old Muse, who just signed with the Pittsburgh organization on a two-way contract this season. “That’s something I pride myself in, being able to win at this level.”
In his two previous starts for Wilkes-Barre/Scranton, Muse came up empty.
He entered Friday’s clash with the Monsters carrying an 0-2 record, despite allowing little more than two goals a game.
That luckless dilemma during his early days with the Penguins ended quickly when he didn’t allow a single shot to cross the goal line.
And Muse deflected a lot of them, as Cleveland came out firing bullets in rapid-fire succession — out-gunning the Penguins 10-5 in the first period before finishing with a 12-shot third period.
Muse made it all for naught with a monster of a game in goal.
“He’s been good,” Penguins coach Clark Donatelli said. “Even his last couple games, he’s solid. He’s calming in there. You know he’s going to make that first save, and he doesn’t give that many rebounds.”
That dependability is a big reason why the Penguins signed Muse during the offseason, after he collected 86 AHL victories during this decade — most notably compiling a 63-46-6 record during parts of five seasons with Charlotte.
And his steady hand couldn’t have come at a better time for the Penguins, who snapped a two-game losing streak and had dropped six of their previous seven games before dealing with the Monsters.
“Oh yeah, we’ve lost a lot of one-goal games and overtime games,” Donatelli said. “It’s good to win a close game with a shutout at home.”
Maybe that type of outcome was overdue for Muse, who dropped a difficult 1-0 decision during his last start between the pipes.
“It doesn’t matter if we play incredible and we lose,” Muse said. “If it’s a win, it’s a win. It’s frustrating not to get wins in my first two games (with Wilkes-Barre/Scranton). But we played well tonight.”
All it took was one big boost to make Muse a winner for the first time with the Penguins.
That came 8:34 into the second period, when Haggerty took a cross-ice pass from Will O’Neill and blasted home a one-timer from the top of the right circle for the game’s only goal, and Haggerty’s first of the season.
“He (later) banged one off the pipe, he hit it square,” Donatelli said. “He would have had two.When he gets scoring opportunities, he’s got a great shot. And he’s going to score.”
Muse made sure one was plenty enough.
“We did a really good job of boxing guys out tonight,” Muse said. “This week of practice, we harped on getting back into the feel of things. I think we saw it. I saw pretty much every shot tonight.”