After meeting just twice in the first half of the season, the Lehigh Valley Phantoms and Wilkes-Barre/Scranton Penguins will be seeing a lot of each other soon.

With 10 meetings in the second half, Wilkes-Barre/Scranton fired the first salvo in their remaining games this season with a 7-1 win at home against the Phantoms this past Saturday.It was former Penguin, Chris Conner, who got the lone goal for the Phantoms, deflecting a shot from Greg Carey on a five-on-three power play in the second period of the game. Anthony Stolarz was bombarded with shots as the Penguins seemed to be in constant breakaway mode throughout the game, mainly because of defensive lapses."We backed off of them and gave them opportunities to have speed. We didn't have tight gaps," said coach Scott Gordon of the defensive lapses. "That and turnovers."The Phantoms have slipped off the torrid pace being set by the Penguins in the Atlantic Division, falling to nine points behind, but staying two points ahead of Providence and four ahead of Hershey in the standings. The top five teams in the Atlantic Division are also the top five teams in the Eastern Conference standings.For Taylor Leier, the meetings with the Penguins are going to go a long way toward deciding how things play out overall for Lehigh Valley."Those games are big on so many levels. It's not just that we're trying to catch them, but we're trying to maintain our standing in the conference," Leier said. "You're playing a difficult team like Wilkes-Barre so much, and then you have the rest of the division teams that are tough, and if you're not careful, pretty soon, two, three quick losses have you slipping. Then of course, there's just the fact of the rivalry between the two teams that makes those games tough."At the end of the most recent game, frustration, combined with the rivalry, started to show as the hitting got harder and the teams were in each other's faces on a regular basis. Tom Sestito and Samuel Morin went at it in a brief flurry of fists, and there's no reason to believe that the remaining games are going to calm down much in intensity."I don't know how it happened that 10 of our 12 games with them wound up in the second half," said Penguins goalie Tristan Jarry."It's kind of a good and bad thing, because ideally, I'd like to have the games spread out more over the season, but the intensity is good, because that's what you're going to be seeing in the playoffs, so it puts you in that mentality."The two teams next meet Valentine's night in Wilkes-Barre/Scranton, and then play at the PPL Center on Feb. 25. That leaves seven games for the last six weeks of the season, with three at home for the Phantoms.THE FINAL 20 ... Conner, Corbin Knight and Andy Miele all scored goals in the final 20 minutes Friday night in Albany to lead the Phantoms to their fifth third-period comeback of the season in a 4-3 win. Lehigh Valley fell behind 2-0, before Scott Laughton made it 2-1 with his 10th goal of the season early in the second period.THAT HURT ... T.J. Brennan received an elbowing major against Albany for a ferocious hit on John Quenneville that didn't appear illegal on replay. Brennan kept his elbow in, there was no head contact, and the hit was delivered just as the puck was being passed. Albany's Jan Mandat chased down Brennan for a fight, resulting in an ejection and suspension for Mandat.NEXT UP ... Lehigh Valley is home Wednesday night against Binghamton to start a three-game homestand. St. John's comes in for games Friday and Saturday night.