Soundin' Off

The bulk of this was planned for overnight if my power hadn’t gone out about a minute before I was going to post it. Ah well. Edited and turned into a morning-skate post:

In about 12 hours, the first gamer of the year will be done. In the meantime, lots of preview stuff you can read. The easiest way is to hit up your newsstand and buy a paper, so you can lay it all out in front of you. Oooh. Printy.

Alternatively:

–The advance. Big debuts.

–The roster.

–Thoughts by position; five questions for the season.

From Friday’s paper, Jeremy Colliton gets the ‘C’ (even though, as a couple of people and I joked this morning, he’s technically not “here”).

Kevin Poulin gets the start tonight. Benn Olson did the drill work with Matt Bertani and Colliton and appears to be the odd man out among skaters.

At around 6:30 Saturday night, we’ll most likely tweet the starting goalies. Around 6:45, we’ll have the opening-night lineups on here. And then it’s off to work. Game 1 of … 76. (That’ll take some getting used to.)

I was all set on Twitter on Friday afternoon to make a Rumored Conference joke and say that no Portland player had ever come in here as property of the Phoenix Coyotes. I even had the box score as a handy visual aid. Um, yeah, read to the bottom; there’s one. But it’s close. Phoenix hasn’t had an Eastern Conference affiliate since 2004. That San Antonio game is its only organization appearance here since. So, um, #rumoredconference. (That is an interesting box score, not only for the names on both sides, but for its entry in the BST record book. You’ll see it in the scoring summary.)

The first goal of the AHL season is also the first goal in the history of the St. John’s IceCaps… and it belongs to Mark Flood. The Caps began things with a win at Providence. Bingo raised the banner, then got beat by Hershey. Springfield fell behind 5-0 and held on to lose 5-2; its first goal was scored by some gentleman named Giroux, whom I’ve never heard of before. But you can’t say “same ol’ Falcons,” because they had won their past seven openers and missed the playoffs all seven years. (Natural hat trick for Manchester’s Marc-Andre Cliche, with assists on all three from Andrei Loktionov.) And Norfolk beat Charlotte in overtime (two assists for Trevor Smith), so clearly the Eastern Conference is far better than the Western.

(If you’re new here, no, that roundup does not happen every night. At least until late March.)

Even my alma mater’s newspaper is scared of this SHU freshman running back.

A nice plaque in Raleigh honoring local native Donnie Mac.

And RIP, Al Davis.

Almost half the lineup played here; a few of them only look funny out there because the sweater is the wrong* color. A bunch of the others played here out of the other dressing room. Jack Capuano was back in what used to be his office and joked about it a couple of times. Building staff, team staff, everybody back together and back at it. If the concourse didn’t look entirely different from last year (just the beginning, said Charlie Dowd), and if there weren’t like 8,000 people expected here (and a packed press box already), it’d be like a normal night here.

Well, almost.

The goalies will split time for the Islanders. Not sure if Tim Thomas will yield to Tuukka Rask.

ISLANDERS
F: Moulson-Tavares (A)-Parenteau
Okposo (A)-Nielsen-Grabner
Haley-Reasoner-Comeau
Pandolfo-Bailey-Cizikas
D: Streit (C)-Mottau
Eaton-Reese
MacDonald-Hamonic
G: Montoya
Nabokov

BOSTON
F: Lucic-Krejci-Horton (A)
Pouliot-Seguin-Marchand
Sauve-Kelly-Peverley
MacDermid-Campbell-Clark (A)
D: Seidenberg-Corvo
Bartkowski-Boychuk (A)
Ference-McQuaid
G: Thomas
Rask

R: Rooney, Charron. L: Cherrey, MacPherson.

Comeau on the right: “a little experiment,” Capuano said.

*-Well, right, but “unexpected,” I guess, in that they played here in white. You know.

It’s not exactly what they’re going to run out there next Saturday, but the Islanders are bringing up something not that far, first up in Newsday:

F: Moulson-Tavares-Parenteau
Okposo-Nielsen-Grabner
Comeau-Reasoner-Haley
Pandolfo-Cizikas-Bailey
D: Streit-Mottau
MacDonald-Hamonic
Eaton-Reese
G: Nabokov
Montoya

No Boston lineup floating yet, but maybe later from the Globe or Herald.

Edit: Comcast says Tim Thomas starts for the B’s.

The league expects the schedule to be released Thursday at 4 p.m. That’s pending Board of Governors approval, which we assume is the rubber-stamp variety, unless someone wants to fight the division-alignment war again.

Will try to get links up as soon as possible, but if it takes a while, check the league’s and the Sound Tigers‘ sites.

Before all that real hockey: The Islanders released their training camp schedule yesterday, along with a roster for the week-long rookie camp that precedes the main camp. Included on that list: Art Bidlevskii, on a tryout. Rookie games at the Coliseum, not at Shelton.

Meanwhile, Providence signed Calle Ridderwall, onetime Isles rookie camper and cousin of Isles draft pick Stefan, to an AHL deal.

And Posnanski on Jim Thome.

The Isles have posted their development camp list. A few non-roster, non-draft-pick invitee names that stuck out: Art Bidlevskii, you’ll remember from the spring here; Max Capuano, son of Dave and nephew of Jack; and goalie Nic Riopel, former Flyers draft pick with two years in the minors, whose first professional win involved a few other campers.

Hoping to get down there at least once. Hate to take requests and then not follow through*, particularly as I have some ideas of my own, but are you guys particularly interested in anything from that camp?

….

Montreal signed Brian Willsie, then picked up Michael Blunden from Columbus and Springfield for Ryan Russell. Winnipeg made Jason Gregoire official. Philly signed Jason Bacashihua and Jamie McGinn’s brother Tye, from the Philly Daily News. The Penguins lost Chris Conner to Detroit. (May add to these if notes come across.) While we wait for the full schedule breakdown, Brendan McCarthy says St. John’s will play Bridgeport four times. The newbies won’t play Albany or Adirondack within the Eastern Conference and will play division rival Providence only four times.

Edit: The AHL’s Team Business Services program honored the Sound Tigers‘ corporate-sales department for generating the biggest growth in the Eastern Conference. We wrote a little on that early in the year.

The AHL’s front-office excellence awards included a Thomas Ebright Award for Mark Chipman.

A really nice read on the B-Sens’ Web site from our ol’ pal Mike Sharp on Grady Whittenburg.

And RIP, John Mackey and Dick Williams.

*-”We’ll try to answer a few requests now.” “Thank you very much for your suggestions, but we had something in mind.” –Dave Guard/Nick Reynolds

Only took down numbers today; I figured it’d be easy to match names to numbers after three days. But then my top line came out “Pitton-Mezei-Robinson” in my head, and I got worried.

Martin-Ullstrom-Joensuu
Hilbert-Hisey-Rakhshani
DiBenedetto-Marcinko-Haley
Figren-Romano-Yablonski
Taylor/Bourbeau

with the same seven defensemen and three goalies. Robin Figren and Kevin Poulin remain questionable for the weekend, though they continue to practice. Figren did leave early, though.

Martin wears 17; Hilbert, 11.

Lots of one-on-one work today, and the players went hard.

Jack Capuano said he has an idea about what to do with the alternate captains’ spots, but he wouldn’t talk about what that is. He’ll be talking with Garth Snow about them shortly.

The two-referee system down here finally became official today. About a quarter of AHL games this year will have two referees, as will all playoff games. We’ll see how it goes.

How about Roy Halladay? Made it look easy. Meanwhile, I continue to want to hate the Phillies, and I continue to find it impossible.

And as we get into the baseball playoffs and the NHL season begins in Finland (second-most wonderful time of the year), the Sound Tigers are supposed to practice at Harbor Yard for the first time Friday. We’re about 53 hours away from the drop of the puck against Worcester. Ready?

With Michael Grabner in the Islanders’ fold and Andy Hilbert on waivers, that’d still put them at 26, more or less. Assume a goalie (most likely, Lawson’s either here or on injured reserve), that’s 25. Then it’s two more — got to be at least one defenseman, unless they’re going to revolutionize the nine-defenseman rotation, and the easiest option is de Haan to junior — to 23, and they could go lower if they desired (no such indication).

Meanwhile: lines! numbers!
9-Justin DiBenedetto 24-David Ullstrom 6-Jesse Joensuu
18-Micheal Haley 26-Rob Hisey 10-Rhett Rakhshani
*13-Justin Taylor 7-Tony Romano 15-Jean Bourbeau
12-Tomas Marcinko/33-Jeremy Yablonski

71-Mark Katic 2-Dylan Reese
5-Dustin Kohn 3-Travis Hamonic
25-Brett Motherwell 22-Anton Klementyev
4-Mark Wotton

Didn’t ask about numbers for Joel Martin and Mikko Koskinen, nor for the absent Kevin Poulin (day-to-day with the said-not-to-be-serious recuperation from off-season surgery) nor for Robin Figren (who hopped on the ice in red as we were livechatting, trying out his foot; also day-to-day for him). Not positive about how that Taylor-Romano-Bourbeau line went, also because of the livechatting.

It’s a first look, but it’s obviously not set in stone, not with four days to go and three cuts to make.

After seven periods this preseason in white practice jerseys without names, the Sound Tigers appeared for the second period tonight at Giant Center in blue jerseys without numbers.

Under other circumstances, we’d probably be talking about the game, in which a team wearing tigers came close to coming back against a team wearing bears before losing 3-2 (that despite some big names in the Hershey lineup), and we’d probably have joked about how soon the Tigers reached eight shots (only 40 minutes), and how that was the score of Game 2, and how Joel Rechlicz beat somebody up (TBA). Instead, we’re talking about a practice game looking like practice.

Hershey coach Mark French, at the end of Tim Leone’s story: “It’s something that shouldn’t happen at this level.”

It leaves 3,100 ticketholders as lost as a dumb hockey writer at a Monday-morning training-camp skate. (More, because most of them are farther away.) It leaves scouts, who may be putting a star next to No. 6 or whoever, in the dark, which conceivably holds a kid back. (Although, to be fair, given the way players — at least on Bridgeport and on other teams that don’t use “real” jerseys in exhibition games — hand off numbers night-to-night in the preseason, just having the number on the back wouldn’t necessarily guarantee the right ID.) And forget about the other team.

It’s puzzling. We’ll see what others have to say.

Anyway. Here’s the box score, courtesy of Tim. Joel Martin actually played goal for Bridgeport, though under the circumstances, you’ll forgive the confusion. Anton Kharin and Tony Romano had the late goals for Bridgeport, 14 seconds apart; Mitch Versteeg assisted on both. No lineup details aside from the goalie and the eight guys who made the box.

Also no immediate word on cuts from here, which have often come quickly after the exhibition finale. Paul Gillis and Nick Bootland have camps beginning within days, so they’re headed back home. There’s a practice here in the morning.

—–

My Aunt Anna made a mean manicotti. She played a tough penny-ante Follow the Queen. She enjoyed listening to John Sterling call Yankees games. (Nobody’s perfect.)

The poor woman spent much of the past six years asking where her husband was. On Friday, at 97, she found him. We’ll miss her.

(If the third-period cuts were Wave 1A… Anyway)

Sent down this morning:
F: Justin DiBenedetto, Micheal Haley, Rob Hisey, Jesse Joensuu, Tomas Marcinko, Rhett Rakhshani, David Ullstrom, Jeremy Yablonski
D: Travis Hamonic, Mark Katic, Dylan Reese
G: Mikko Koskinen

Every tryout player was released (Ortmeyer, McAmmond, Kolanos, Eriksson, Legace), and word from the Island is that none of them are candidates to come to Bridgeport.

That leaves 28 on the Island, including the injured Kyle Okposo and Mark Streit, so barring any other IR moves, at least three more to come. If one of those is Nino Niederreiter, then only two would come here. Edit: Hang on. I took the 28 from the team’s press release, and it added up for me, but Chris Botta’s tweet reminded me about de Haan, who’s not on the nhl.com roster. Edit2: Actually, the Isles didn’t include Streit and Okposo in 28. With de Haan, then, I’ve got them at 27 and am pulling my hair out. Edit3: Looks like just a stray line for both of us: It is 27. For what it’s worth. Cuts by Wednesday.

“You ask me who I like,” Pat Bingham says. “I like ‘em all.”

It’s not obstinance. (Particularly since I didn’t ask the question that time.)

You can see it in the coach. He’s not saying they’re perfect. He’s not saying that performance gets it done in the AHL regular season. He’s not saying all of these kids will be here for the long haul, much less staying after Sunday.

But he liked what he saw, for the most part, both nights; he got to watch from on high tonight and let Paul Gillis and Nick Bootland run the bench. He pointed out how the team got to the net in the first period and scored.

Some productive nights, in different ways. Taylor scored two goals. McGuirk and Landry had a couple of points. Syvret made some nice plays in his own end. Gelinas made a few good saves but let in some goals from the outside.

One more tomorrow.

Hartford 0 3 1–4
Bridgeport 5 0 0–5

First Period – 1, Bridgeport, McGuirk 1 (Landry, Syvret), 3:53. 2, Bridgeport, Taylor 1 (Landry), 13:38 (pp). 3, Bridgeport, Leisenring 1 (Asselin), 15:22. 4, Bridgeport, Romano 1 (McGuirk), 16:35. 5, Bridgeport, Taylor 2 (Dickson), 18:42. Penalties – Garlock, Hfd (slashing), 1:35; Nightingale, Hfd (boarding), 11:44; McKelvie, Hfd, major (fighting), 19:01; Syvret, Bpt, major (fighting), 19:01; Versteeg, Bpt (roughing), 20:00.

Second Period – 6, Hartford, Grachev 1 (Wong), 1:35. 7, Hartford, Dupont 1, 6:21. 8, Hartford, J.Williams 1 (Kundratek), 18:18. Penalties – J.Williams, Hfd (roughing), :54; Cameron, Hfd, minor-major (goaltender interference, fighting), 4:17; Klementyev, Bpt, major (fighting), 4:17; Baldwin, Hfd (slashing), 9:52; Landry, Bpt (interference), 11:44; N.Williams, Hfd (high-sticking), 15:47.

Third Period – 9, Hartford, Glass 1 (N. Williams, Grachev), 19:03 (pp). Penalties – Klementyev, Bpt (hooking), 1:14; Kharin, Bpt (hooking), 13:09; Sellitto, Bpt (roughing), 17:17.

Shots on goal — Hartford 8-12-9–29. Bridgeport 11-7-8–26.

Power play opportunities — Hartford 1 of 5, Bridgeport 1 of 6.

Goaltenders — Hartford, Talbot 0-1-0 (11 shots-6 saves), Grumet-Morris (start second, 15-15). Bridgeport, Gelinas 1-0-0 (29-25).

Attendance — N/A. Referee — Binda. Linesmen — Galvin, Simeon.

—–

So now we wait for the cuts from the Big Club. They could come as early as tomorrow — there was even light scuttle earlier in the week that some guys might come tonight, but that could easily have been about the six we learned today — or maybe Monday. We await firm word on a practice schedule, too. In fact, there’s a possibility of an afternoon practice Tuesday… which, of all things, would put it smack-dab into the middle of our weekly chat, which my boss and Sean and I just set last night at 1:30. Nothing’s easy.

If you didn’t see the tweet, in the middle of the third period tonight, the Islanders announced that they’ve also sent Robin Figren and Kevin Poulin to Bridgeport. Goalie Joel Martin of Odessa was also released from his NHL PTO; his AHL PTO kicked in, and he’s set to play in Hershey on Sunday.

(Won’t be in Hershey — in fact, I’ll probably be unable to pay any attention in the moment — and there’s no radio/TV, but you’ll surely see updates from the team, from Tim Leone, and from John Walton. I’ll try to check in later.)

Poulin was in town already, in fact, and after the game said he’s feeling good. He confirmed that his absence from practice was more precautionary than anything; no sense pushing anything in the preseason. He said he got back on the ice Friday.

Brady Leisenring had a welt over one eye and didn’t play most of the game. No further update on Matt Duffy.

Chaos in Quebec, as Mike Cammalleri whacks Nino Niederreiter, and Messrs. Haley and Yablonski provide us with a vision of things to come. Ray had some video of the mayhem in the comments on the previous post.

Awesome find on Uni Watch: the 1939 Bruins’ victory-dinner program, complete with autographs.

Seen on World Wide Words: Where that confounding ‘P’ came from in “Comptroller.”

And it’s nice to hear the Jackie DeShannon/Sharon Seeley song “Breakaway” (albeit in a little harder version than the Irma Thomas original or the DeShannon demo) on that NFL commercial. C’mon, NHL, missed opportunity.

Sitting here in the corner as usual. With no names on the back and trying to look through Hartford, getting a look at anything on the Bridgeport side was an adventure. Based on what I got and what I assume by filling in the blanks, here’s Bridgeport:

BRIDGEPORT
F: 8 Patrick Asselin-13 Brady Leisenring-9 Jean Bourbeau
24 Brandon Svendsen-23 Justin Taylor-6 John-Scott Dickson
10 Jordan Fulton-19 Brian McMillin-5 Mike Sellitto
21 Brian McGuirk-15 Tony Romano-2 Anton Kharin
D: 17 Anton Klementyev-7 Steve Tarasuk
27 Corey Syvret-3 Jon Landry
16 John Kivisto-22 Mitch Versteeg
G: 1 Marc-Antoine Gelinas
33 Ryan Nie

Matt Duffy is out with a shoulder injury of unspecified severity.

HARTFORD
F: 8 Brodie Dupont (A)-7 Evgeny Grachev-21 Jeremy Williams (A)
18 Chris McKelvie-19 RYan Garlock-20 Bretton Cameron
42 Brandon Wong-43 Kelsey Tessier-10 Marc-Olivier Vallerand
29 Matt Voakes-41 Brendan Connolly-27 Chris Chappell

D: 2 Nigel Williams (A)-14 Trevor Glass
3 Jyri Niemi-45 Tomas Kundratek
5 Lee Baldwin-26 Jared Nightingale

G: 60 Cameron Talbot
65 Dov Grumet-Morris

We’ll kind of liveblog here and maybe see if we can flesh out those lines a little better.

Referee is Geno Binda. Linesmen are Luke Galvin and Paul Simeon.

3:53 first: After Hartford kills a power play, McGuirk goes to the net to redirect home a pass from the right side. 1-0, Bridgeport.

Am correcting those lines up top and adding Hartford’s.

11:00: Had our first Anton to Anton lead pass a few minutes ago. Here, Klementyev jumped up to take a pass in stride from Romano, but it hopped away from him.

13:38: After Nightingale takes a run at Fulton, Taylor scores late on the power play. Bridgeport had kept pressuring, and Landry kept a puck in the zone to help set it up. 2-0 Bridgeport.

15:22: Off a faceoff after an icing, Bridgeport makes it 3-0. Asselin took the puck away from Lee Baldwin, and Leisenring backhanded it home from the right side of the net.

Hartford’s lineup is less-experienced tonight, and without the early power plays, the Wolf Pack don’t have that early advantage they did last night.

16:35: Tony Romano scores off a McGuirk steal, and it’s 4-0. Just a little difference from last night.

18:42: Taylor scores again, second effort from the front of the net. Dickson got him the puck out of the right corner. It’s 5-0.

19:01.5: Syvret and McKelvie go behind the Bridgeport net.

19:48.6: Gelinas gets a little test, a puck that appeared to deflect up. He juggled but held on. That’ll do it for the first after a little scrum: 5-0 Bridgeport.

Were this a regular-season game, it would tie the team record for goals in a period.

SECOND
Grumet-Morris in goal for Hartford. Mitch Versteeg got a roughing penalty at the buzzer, but it’s evened out.

1:35: Grachev pokes in a rebound of a Wong shot to get Hartford on the board at four-on-four.

4:17: Gelinas makes good saves on Wong and Cameron in tight… out of a scrum come Cameron and Klementyev, and Anton gets some good shots in, then gets the takedown. Bridgeport gets a power play out of it.

5:01: Leisenring goes off with trainer Mike Schroeder.

6:27: Dupont goes wide on Landry and snaps one off Gelinas’ arm and in. It’s 5-2.

16:38: Teams have traded fruitless power plays. On this latest one, for Bridgeport, Klementyev came out from behind the net and gave the puck away to Grachev; Gelinas gloved his shot wide of the left post. Still 5-2.

18:18: Off a giveaway along the boards, Jeremy Williams snaps one over Gelinas’ glove to cut Bridgeport’s lead to 5-3.

After two, it’s 5-3.

THIRD PERIOD

5:23: Grumet-Morris gets lucky, then good: He leaves a rebound on a long shot, but Sellitto can’t quite find it. Kharin recovers the puck, but Grumet-Morris, sprawled on his side, reaches up to keep it a two-goal game.

6:30: Grumet-Morris stops Romano on a turnaround in the slot after a giveaway.

17:17: Sellitto gets a glove up into Kundratek’s face behind the Hartford net, and Binda calls him for roughing. Time out, Hartford, with 2:43 to go, heading to its fifth power play.

19:03.3: Glass scores on a low one-timer from the right point at six-on-four, and it’s 5-4.

It ends that way, though, just barely: Bridgeport 5, Hartford 4.

Before the games tonight in Port St. Lucie and Clearwater, the Islanders reassigned three guys who weren’t on those lists: Dustin Kohn, Anton Klementyev and Tony Romano. Kohn goes on waivers for the first time. No word if Romano or Klementyev might play here this weekend.

Edit: Word is they are likely to play tonight.