Soundin' Off

There’s a line in tonight’s walkout song — well, in the original version, not Bill Haley’s and his Comets’ — about rolling of eyes and gritting of teeth.*

This team might make you do that sometimes this year.

They gave up another quick one. Then they gave up three quick ones. The game was more or less over, dropping Bridgeport to 7-8, and for whatever it’s worth, they fell to fifth place, too. (And that eighth-place team is a-coming after them, too.)

There were all kinds. There was a pretty power-play setup. There was an intercepted clear. There was a bad break, where they blocked two shots only to have the second bounce straight to the open man. There was one funky one that deflected back through Munroe’s legs; there was one from the other side that somehow got through.** Five goals in 16 shots, and the Falcons were gone.

Bridgeport’s 36 shots probably included about 14 on the power play — maybe more, but give or take — including eight on that first chance that produced the goal. Of the 36, 12 came from either Flood or MacDonald. (Flood had four in the first period, and they might all have come on that one power play.)

At 12:22 of the first, Trevor Smith forced a turnover and got the puck to the net, where Devan Dubnyk stopped Greg Mauldin.

“It’s a whole different game, with Trevor Smith going to the net, if Greg Mauldin puts that in,” Capuano said.

The cynical response is that Springfield would then have taken its 2-1 lead at 12:37 instead of 19:01.

—

Prescout. Typically good day for the usual suspects.

Montreal plucked Jay Leach off re-entry waivers. Jersey, meanwhile, signed Dean McAmmond.

Coupla-time Sound Tiger Jean Desrochers retired, his team announced.

Ryan Kinasewich was the ECHL’s Player of the Month.

Good stuff on Faith and Fear in Flushing today. Greg is happy with a Neil Best report on SNY’s Thursday offseason programming, and I’ve got to agree. (MSG had a Harry Howell film this morning that was fun to see.) Jason imagines the afterlife.

Good story from Ken Levine.

And there’s brighter Hughes family news.

*-In a breathtakingly different context, of course.
**-I say “somehow” because I was twitterin’ on the previous one at the time and couldn’t get a handle on the replays. Stupid technology.

Bobby Hughes is out on bail and on his way upstate, if he’s not there already. Howard Saffan (”We stand by Bobby. … We look forward to him getting back on the ice”) said Hughes has an expected court date within a week. Will he then be back with the team? Could depend on what happens in that court date, but it doesn’t sound as if the team will keep him away.

Anyway, they’re playing tonight in Springfield. Joensuu is out sick. Rechlicz apparently has a hand infection that’s keeping him out. Saw Klementyev here, but he’s not playing.

BRIDGEPORT
F: Smith-Moore (A)-Bentivoglio
DiBenedetto-Romano-Mauldin (A)
Martin-Marcinko-Haley
Gillies-Morency-Figren
D: Wotton (C)-Westgarth
Kohn-MacDonald
Katic-Flood
G: Munroe
Lawson

SPRINGFIELD
F: Trukhno-Potulny (A)-Thomas
Linglet-Wiseman-Fretter
Reddox-O’Marra-McDonald
Brennan/Paukovich
D: Arsene (C)-Taylor (A)
Armstrong-Motin
Peckham-Plante
Nickerson
G: Dubnyk
Sorochan

R: L’Ecuyer. L: Colby, Redding.

Edit: Change on Springfield. Guess I gave up on their rushes too soon./Edit2: BTW, Mauldin is starting with Smith and Moore.

Interesting swap on the third line, with Martin playing the left and Haley on the right.

L’Ecuyer usually let them play last year, though he had one or two whistle-happy games.

Meanwhile, Chris Armstrong. Not a whole lot of links to the 21 Finalists floating around this league anymore. (Except, of course, for the one who keeps dominating this league and has been to a couple of more finals.)

Coming down late today: Bobby Hughes in court to waive extradition to New York on two serious charges.

Legal expertise limited, I’ll leave it at what Dan wrote for now.

Haskins, Hughes and Rechlicz remained out, though Klementiev hopped back into practice. Their availability for Friday’s beginning of the three-in-three (or, heck, the rest of it): undetermined.

Steve Zipay reports that Steve Valiquette starts for the Rangers tonight in Edmonton.

They weren’t bad. They just made some mistakes at bad times and lost, which, well, tends to be normal for games played before 3 p.m.

One somewhat-concerning trend: Giving up quick goals after their own goals. Got it in the story, but they’ve scored 31 goals; three were in overtime, one was the shootout point, and one was Morency’s to end Sunday’s game in Providence, so that’s five that ended games. Take those away, and of those 26 (in 14 games), four times the opponent has come back within 30 seconds. That’s the first Worcester game here, the Binghamton game here, Friday in Worcester (the winner) and the big one today here.

—

The Phantoms are 5-for-12 on the power play against Bridgeport and 3-for-46 against everybody else. “They get pucks to the net,” Capuano said.

Darryl Bootland signed a PTO with Manitoba. Via Elite Prospects: Junior Lessard is no longer with Ilves (because of a knee injury, if Google Translate didn’t let us down).

Former WBS Penguin Bill Thomas signed a PTO with Springfield.

Tim McManus has more on Lukar Kaspar’s departure from the Flyers organization.

And a classic Lio from the weekend.

Jonathan said it last year: “Cool Fun 101 games are neither cool nor fun.”

I’ll try not to complain about the time anymore, either. These tend to get easier once I wake up.

Those who were out yesterday appear to be out again, though I’m not sure if Jack Capuano is here or not Capuano is here.

BRIDGEPORT
F: Smith-Moore (A)-Bentivoglio
DiBenedetto-Mauldin (A)-Joensuu
Haley-Romano-Martin
Gillies-Morency-Figren
D: Kohn-Wotton (C)
MacDonald-Flood
Katic-Gleed
G: Lawson
Munroe

ADIRONDACK
F: Nodl-Ross (C)-Ward (A)
Maroon-Matsumoto-Legein
Dingle-Beaulieu-Bellamy
Klotz-Kalinski-Clackson
D: Bartulis-Sloan
Marshall-Bourdon
Lehtivuori-Mormina (A)
G: Backlund
Riopel
R: D. Banfield. L: Galvin, Spannaus.

Adirondack’s defensemen are 7-6, 4-5 and 2-3. How beautiful is that? (Particularly on the orange Flyers-throwback style sweater, with the black-on-white nameplate and everything.) (I’m short a letter for the Phantoms at the moment.)

Will liveblog a little on this file as events warrant.

—-

–Big crowd of kids. Only a handful of sparsely-populated sections as the puck drops.

–The kids love the rough stuff. Gillies and Clackson fought a few minutes ago. Now Haley becomes the second Sound Tiger to take a good run at Bartulis, and he was getting a penalty when Klotz went after him. Klotz spun him around a few times. Meanwhile, Martin, Bartulis, I think Bellamy and Romano went down in a pile in front of the Adirondack net. No penalties on the board out of all that.

–Strike that: Bridgeport has a power play out of it. Double rough on Klotz; charge on Haley.

–Bentivoglio is going off in some pain here; a collision near the blue line. I was peeking down to blog about how the Phantoms were short-handed because, in all the penalty confusion, no one had served Klotz’s second minor, so there was no one to come out of the box. Oops.

–Bridgeport didn’t score on a 58-second five-on-three and now have a Haley slashing penalty to kill. Shots were 4-2 Adirondack; they were 5-4 Bridgeport after the back end of the two minors and are 8-4 now.

–Off a draw, Matsumoto scores on a rebound (or blocked shot, couldn’t tell which) right in front; 1-0 Adirondack.

–Trevor Smith cut Nodl up high inside two minutes to go in the period; it’s a double minor.

–Bentivoglio is back and killing penalties. Morency has been killing, too, and ragged off about 20 seconds on this minor. That’s it for the first period.

–Those sparsely populated sections appear to have filled in nicely. They are full of kids screaming for a T-shirt. My head will not survive.

–They’re playing Miley Cyrus’ “Party in the USA” for not less than the second time. I get the feeling I’ll hear it at least once more. Calls to mind the 50-Cent Riot of 2003. You remember that? They cut out “In Da Club” to play the bells as the team was about to come back on the ice… and several thousand kids started booing and yelling? Ah, memories.

–Mormina interferes with Bentivoglio to cancel the last 43 minutes of the double minor.

–Adirondack’s Marshall has had words with Haley, Martin and someone on the bench in the past two minutes.

–Gillies-Morency-Haley have played together the past two shifts. Morency drew a penalty last time; he had a scoring chance this time.

–Moore got a stick into Bellamy and Mauldin caught Ward from behind, so Bridgeport’s down two men here with 7:09 left in the second. Big moment, obviously.

–Bridgeport killed it off with only three shots, and now Bartulis hooks Mauldin as he races out after Martin’s chip — it’s a penalty shot. Mauldin takes it in slowly, goes backhand and scores with 4:49 to go. Yep, big moment. Game’s tied.

–End of two, 1-1. BPT has 18-15 shots edge.

–When Bertani first pointed “Party in the USA” out to me a couple of weeks ago, I thought it evoked Lily Allen’s LDN. Your mileage may vary.

–Attendance: 8,035 (and the Nighthawks thank you), seventh-highest in team history here.

–Nov. 4 is apparently a good day for penalty shots. Last BST goal on a penalty shot: Rob Collins, Nov. 4, 2005, vs. Manchester, a landmark night on the blog.

–They’d been rolling four lines, and my computer had crashed, when Joensuu chipped ahead to Mauldin, and Mauldin scored on a two-on-one. But off the draw, the Phantoms put in a rebound off a left-wing slapper to tie it. Adirondack killed off a Bridgeport power play; the Phantoms are going on the advantage with 7:08 left.

–Bridgeport killed the first but now has another to kill with exactly five minutes left.

–And off the draw, the Phantoms’ Nodl scores on a rebound. The call was MacDonald for kneeing. He did not seem to believe it.

–Surreal moment. Ross and Bentivoglio collided near the Adirondack blue line, and Joensuu went straight for Ross. The penalty puts Bridgeport down with 1:58 to go.

–Joey Mormina came in with no points in nine games; he’ll leave with three points after scoring the Phantoms’ third power-play goal.

That’s it: Adirondack 4, Bridgeport 2. Back to morning-normal. More in a bit.

Election Day. Vote hard. Several kids hanging around The Rinks this morning. Lucky kids. Only school of mine that was ever a polling place: PS 83. (Kindergarten/first grade.)

So they got to see a “short-handed” bunch of Sound Tigers on the ice: Haskins remained out (said he was coming along, though, with whatever that upper-body injury is); Joel Rechlicz, Anton Klementiev and Tomas Marcinko were also out, and Jack Capuano was home. There’s some sort of bug going around. Supposedly not the flu, but sounds bad enough. (I’m sniffling, myself.)

So they were all the way down to 13 forwards, seven defensemen and two goalies.

Consistency was the story of the weekend, to hear it from those we talked to. When they had it, they did well. When they didn’t, well, they lost two games.

Enjoy those political ads while you can.

Saturday, the former Little Punk in Illinois married the girl for whom he came home. ‘Twas a blast. I’m proud to have gained a sister (and a little doggie niece).

Though they went and scheduled their wedding during hockey season, I lucked out and missed only a road trip.

While we were busy, the Sound Tigers played Worcester and Portland and Providence (against a team that was coming off this skunking). They only beat Portland. Hometown-paper/blog reports: Bill Ballou (with notes in Worcester; Paul Betit and Chris Roy in Portland; and what passes for coverage of a home game for the Providence Journal.

After that, the team had Monday off. Was rather glad to have it myself. We’ll see how they’re feeling in the morning, and then we’ll see how things go Wednesday morning.

No Haskins this morning, but Greg Mauldin and Jesse Joensuu were out there (on a line with Justin DiBenedetto), as was Dustin Kohn on defense. Do they play tomorrow? “Not sure yet,” Jack Capuano said. He sounded as if he’s considering giving them an extra day, at least some of them. The team split up into two groups for a little competition: The skaters went five-on-a-goalie, one set on each end, and the first side to score earned a point. The losing team had to skate a couple of laps at the end. Mauldin’s team lost, but he was exempted from the skating. (Joensuu did skate and looked OK.)

Have kept forgetting to mention that Jeremy Reich is in town. He still has the cast on his wrist for another week or so, but he has been skating on his own and working out.

Just spent a few minutes perusing News from 1930, which has broken format for a few days to go back 80 years instead of 79 and examine how the Wall Street Journal reported the great crash of 1929. Fascinating.

And with that, unless something crazy happens, I’ll leave you alone for a few days. Phil’s making the trip, if I recall correctly (Edit: Actually, he’s joining the team Saturday in Portland), so you’ll have a local perspective on the radio Webcast for two games, at least.

Edit: OK, I lied: back with Eric Boguniecki’s signing with Alaska.

–Same cast of characters as yesterday. Some if not all of the dinged-up will skate tomorrow and see how it goes, and then they’ll have a chance to make some decisions for the road trip.

–Katie Strang, meanwhile, reports that Doug Weight had swine flu. (We’ll see if you can actually read that through the pay wall.) Similar announcements have been coming from around the league.

–Former Beast standout Ryan Johnson took a hard spill into the boards but appears to be doing OK.

–And finally, well, then, maybe Andre Agassi should stay out of “upcoming biography.” (/grammar joke)
Edit: Well played, Sports Pickle.

All the dings left the Sound Tigers almost short-handed today. (Not quite. Still had more guys than they usually did in 2002.) Missing were Tyler Haskins, Jesse Joensuu (with a pretty pronounced limp, still), Dustin Kohn and Greg Mauldin, though all were in the building. Too early to know for sure about the weekend. One who was back to full strength: Micheal Haley. Matt Bertani told him he looked really good during the lap-skating that ended practice, staying strong while others started to fade. “Had a lot of practice,” Haley said.

From the comments: Heard nothing about Guenin throwing a stick, let alone hitting someone, but I’ll ask. And when you consider Lawson was in the ECHL a year ago, it’s quite an ongoing rise for him. He has certainly played well, and without the shoulder injury, he probably would have received an NHL look last year. Starter? Who knows. Lots of luck involved there. But a chance to make it? Why not?

Jason Krog got the call.

Botta presents a nice first-person piece from Pat Dapuzzo about the aftermath of his awful on-ice accident.

As tweeted earlier from somewhere in West Haven and as released about the same time, Mikko Koskinen will miss eight to 10 weeks with a torn hip labrum. Details about the injury — which hip, for instance — and treatment weren’t immediately available. Talked to Jack Capuano a few moments ago, and he wasn’t even sure when or how it happened.

So it drops to a two-man rotation until Christmastime.

Edit: Word this afternoon was he’d be evaluated further to see if he needs surgery, but Katie Strang is reporting he will undergo surgery.