SPRINGFIELD, Mass. – The Springfield Thunderbirds (4-6-2-1) could not overcome a litany of penalty troubles and turnovers, taking a 5-2 loss at the hands of the Hartford Wolf Pack (8-8-1-0) on Tuesday morning in the annual School Day Game at the MassMutual Center.

The T-Birds’ early-game woes continued, as they surrendered the opening goal for a fifth straight contest. Carey Terrance neatly tipped a Nathan Aspinall shot past Georgii Romanov at 3:10 of the first to give Hartford a 1-0 advantage.

Springfield’s best chance to equalize came when veteran Oskar Sundqvist skillfully backhanded a pass through the blue paint to Otto Stenberg for a quick one-timer, but Hartford netminder Spencer Martin stood tall and rejected the bid.

The Hartford power play fired the next jab at 7:30 of the second, taking advantage of an abbreviated 5-on-4 as Drew Fortescue slipped a right-circle wrister past Romanov’s blocker arm to extend the visitors’ lead to 2-0.

Just 2:31 later, the teams were skating 4-on-4 when Arseni Koromyslov connected with a glove-side wrister for his first AHL goal, beating Martin upstairs to trim the lead to 2-1.

The one-goal margin carried into the period’s final minute, but the Wolf Pack found a way to earn more separation as Taylor Raddysh took advantage of a rebound at the edge of the crease to push the lead to 3-1 with just 33 seconds remaining on the clock.

After making three separate breakaway and point-blank saves earlier in the game, Romanov finally surrendered a goal on a Glenn Gawdin backhand in close at 3:08 of the third, which built up the Wolf Pack’s biggest lead of the day at 4-1.

Jurak Pekarcik, who assisted on Koromyslov’s goal in the second, got one back for Springfield at 8:34 as he slipped a wrister through Martin’s armpit on the short side to make it 4-2.

However, any T-Birds hopes of a comeback were dashed when a five-minute major and game misconduct to Sundqvist gave Hartford a man advantage with just over five minutes left. On the power play, Liam Greentree potted an empty-netter for his seventh man-up goal of the year.

The T-Birds now take to the road for four of their next five games, beginning with a trip to Providence to take on the Bruins on Friday at 7:05 p.m. at Amica Mutual Pavilion.

2026-27 T-Birds season memberships and individual game tickets are on sale now. Reserve your seats at SpringfieldThunderbirds.com or call (413) 739-GOAL (4625).