WORCESTER, Mass. – Maybe the Portland Pirates won’t set a franchise record for most penalty kills in a season.
But after what’s transpired recently, they might be headed in that direction.
Portland’s slump continued Sunday when Matt Irwin scored a power-play goal with 3.3 seconds left in regulation to give the Worcester Sharks a 3-2 victory.
The fact Alex Biega was penalized for holding with less than two minutes left in the game irked Coach Kevin Dineen.
“I can’t comment on the call other than I know in the last three games we do nothing but kill penalties down the stretch,” said Dineen, whose team has lost six of its last seven. “Whatever’s going on that has caused this to be a continuous factor against this team I think we can look at it internally.
“You’d also like to think if there’s some kind of message being sent to the team … ‘uncle’ … we’ve got the message.”
Irwin beat David Leggio (27 saves) top shelf with a slap shot from the top of the left circle.
“(Irwin) made a heck of a shot,” Dineen said. “There were a couple seconds left in the game and we block a shot, and the next thing you know it ends up on another guy’s stick.
“You’d like to think you can get yourself into overtime but it wasn’t meant to be tonight.”
Worcester grabbed a 1-0 lead on Sean Sullivan’s slap shot from the right circle at 16:58 of the first.
Dan DaSilva forced a turnover in Portland’s end midway through the second and Worcester capitalized when Ryan Del Monte snapped a shot under the crossbar.
At face value, the shots on goal in that period would indicate Portland had a huge advantage and should have scored at least once.
Portland outshot Worcester, 15-3, with the three shots being the fewest allowed in a period this season by the Pirates. But as Mark Mancari noted, those stats were deceiving.
“Sometimes you look at the shots and you think ‘They’re outshooting them,’ ” Mancari said. “But are they quality shots? That’s the difference.
“We had a lot of shots from the perimeter with nobody driving the net.
“There isn’t a point in shooting the puck if no one’s going to be there.”
Portland did produce more quality shots in the third period.
First, Corey Tropp beat Alex Stalock (26 saves) when he circled in front and stuffed the puck inside the right post at 8:15.
Then, six minutes later, Stalock swept the puck behind the net and it deflected to Derek Whitmore on the left side from where he poked home his 11th goal.
“The last few games we’ve been in penalty trouble,” Mancari said in what was an epitaph for this game. “You can’t win games when you’re killing penalties, especially when you’re killing them in the last two minutes of a game.”
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