SALEM, N.H. – Monday’s exhibition game at the Salem ICENTER against the Manchester Monarchs was filled with teachable moments for the Portland Pirates.

A little more than 24 hours after the Monarchs beat the Pirates 4-3 in OT at the Portland Ice Arena, they thoroughly dominated in a 7-1 win.

“We know where we are, and there’s lots of work to do,” Portland Pirates Coach Ray Edwards said. “There are lessons there that are good and we have to continue to learn from them. We’ve got a lot of stuff that we’ve got to get covered.”

Portland, which currently has 16 first- or second-year pros on the roster, went with a relatively young lineup against the Monarchs, who used two players who spent the last part of last season playing for the Stanley Cup champion Los Angeles Kings.

“We needed to see these young players, and where they might fit in,” Edwards said.

“We need to have some of them, so we wanted to put them out there and put them in situations and see what they can do.”

Still, Edwards refused to use the youthfulness of his lineup as an excuse for Monday’s poor performance.

“The biggest thing is how we have to play, the way we have to play,” he said.

The Pirates took 11 penalties and allowed five power-play goals.

“To me, we’ve got to deal with the penalties,” Edwards said. “There were probably seven bad penalties there, undisciplined, lazy penalties. There were penalties because we aren’t competing hard enough.”

Linden Vey and rookie Tyler Toffoli each had a goal and an assist as Manchester finished its exhibition schedule 3-0.

Jordan Weal, David Kolomatis, Andy Andreoff, Brandon Kozun and Slava Voynov also scored for the Monarchs.

With 5:59 left to play, rookie forward Darian Dziurzynski scored for the Pirates.

The Pirates, who open the regular season Saturday night against the Adirondack Phantoms in Glens Falls, N.Y., finished their exhibition schedule 1-2.

“The good thing is that game is over,” Edwards said. “That’s the preseason. Now we can look toward the regular season. We understand now it’s for real and we’ve got to get some work done.”

Said Portland forward Jordan Szwarz: “You take a game like this, and you learn as much as you can from it. Then you move past it and get ready for the season opener on Saturday.”

“You definitely want to learn from every game, whether its preseason or regular season,” said Chris Conner, a seven year veteran in his first year with the Pirates.

“You want to get better as a team every game, so we’ll go back to work and learn from it.”

Staff Writer Paul Betit can be contacted at 791-6424 or at: pbetit@pressherald.com

Twitter: PaulBetitPPH