Photo Credit: Lindsay A. Mogle / Utica Comets

I skipped another week, so it looks like this one is going to be another Weeks in Review article – I hope you’re ready for that.

This one is going to be considerably more chipper than the last one, which covered a long and excruciating losing streak. This time around, the Comets are winning! They’ve won five of their last six games, thanks to fantastic goaltending and a super hot top line. Come read all about it!

The Providence Bruins don’t post highlight packs of their games, are you kidding me?! You can find the AHL highlights for this game here.

The Bridgeport Sound Tigers have also neglected to post highlights, though you can find the AHL highlights here.

Since this article is covering two weeks, and since I skipped it last time, I’m gonna give this award away to not just one player, but an entire line.

The Comets have been a one-line team these past couple of weeks, which is actually an improvement, since they’ve normally been getting consistent offence from nobody at all.

These past two weeks however, Alex Grenier, Curtis Valk, and Darren Archibald have combined for nine goals and 23 points in a span of six games.

I cut together a video of all nine goals scored by this trio over the past two weeks, for your viewing pleasure:

The really interesting thing about this line is that only one of the three of them is signed to an NHL contract – that would be Alex Grenier, and he can’t even get a sniff of the NHL because Jayson Megna needs his 18 minutes a night.

Grenier, Valk, and Archibald are, in that order, the top three scorers for Utica this season, totaling 31, 26, and 25 points respectively. That’s puts them far above several forwards who are on NHL contracts like Joe LaBate, Jake Virtanen, Mike Zalewski, Cole Cassels, Borna Rendulic, Michael Carcone, and Yan-Pavel Laplante, who can hardly crack the lineup when he’s healthy.

Sure, there are some prospects there, but the Canucks have also wasted contracts on guys like Laplante and Mackenze Stewart when they could be giving them to guys like Valk and Archibald who could actually survive an NHL game if they ever needed to be called up.

Jordan Subban missed a game and everyone freaked out!

Naturally the go-to assumption for Canucks fans is healthy scratch, but it turns out Subban was dealing with a bit of a shoulder injury. He missed three games before returning to the lineup last Friday.

Thatcher Demko missed both games last weekend due to illness, leading the Comets to sign PTO goaltenders to back up Richard Bachman.

Joe LaBate, Yan-Pavel Laplante, John Negrin, Tom Nilsson and Derek Hulak have all missed all or most of the last two weeks with injuries. Each is considered week-to-week with the exception of LaBate who is supposed to be day-to-day.

Andrey Pedan has been yanked back and forth this season, and is currently up with the Canucks again after being recalled on January 10th. Of course, he still hasn’t played a single game this season (not even at forward!).

The Comets added defenceman Alex Wall on a PTO for Wednesday’s game last week, with only five healthy defencemen on the roster after Pedan was called up. He was released the following day.

With Demko being ill, the Comets signed a couple of goaltenders to PTOs to back up Richard Bachman on the weekend. Joe Spagnoli warmed the bench on Friday while Jonah Imoo rode the pine on Saturday.

As is often the case when the Comets are winning games, their goaltending has been fantastic. That’s been necessary as usual, since even with the top line’s run of production, they’ve only scored 15 goals over the past two weeks (2.5 goals per game) – but they’ve only allowed 11.

Thatcher Demko missed a pair of games last weekend due to illness, but the games he played prior to that were highly impressive.

In the past two weeks, Richard Bachman has been the best he’s been all season, which is good since he’s had to play the majority of the games. In the five games he’s played since returning from injury, the lowest single game save percentage he’s put up was .914, while saving 97 percent of the 70 shots he faced last weekend.

Both goaltenders started out rough this season, and while Demko rebounded while Bachman was injured, the Comets now have two goaltenders that are standing on their heads for this team.

The Comets outshot their opponents just once in the past two weeks, which isn’t typically a recipe for success, but you do have to take score effects into account. For the most part, the games were relatively close.

Their penalty kill continues to function well, although it dipped slightly to 80.6 percent on the season. The Comets allowed just four power play goals against in the past six games, but on just 18 opportunities, for a kill rate of 77.8 percent.

Their power play has been abysmal in this time period (like parent, like affiliate), scoring on just one of 20 opportunities. Unlike their parent club however, Travis Green’s Comets are actually changing up personnel and trying different things. It’s likely only a matter of time before they break through and get some goals – before this slump, their power play was operating at a very respectable 18.8 percent (now down to 17.1).

Following this stretch of five wins in six games, the Comets have moved their way up the standings to tenth, which is the highest they’ve been in months (recall that string of six straight weeks in 11th that they couldn’t move from, until they fell further down).

Tonight the Comets are visiting The Rock, which is a name that attempts to make Newfoundland sound cooler than it actually is. Utica will games their tonight and tomorrow (3:00pm PST after adjusting for weird Newfie time) before heading back to upstate New York to take on the Syracuse Crunch on Saturday.