Soundin' Off

As noted in comments, Sean Bentivoglio signed with Augsburg, joining sometime linemate Mike Radja over there (along with, among others, Barry Tallackson, Jon D’Aversa, Noah Clarke, Jonathan Paiement and Kyle Wanvig).

They will have a lot of joy in it, their coach is absolutely convinced.

While they talk about the Bergenheim surprise up top, Sean Bentivoglio’s name is also missing from the list of players tendered qualifying offers, which sets him free.

Got a couple of calls in to ask about that. As recently as last week, was told he was likely to be tendered.

Kohn, Lawson and Reese did get qualifying offers and will be restricted free agents. Longtime Sound Tigers Bergenheim and Jeff Tambellini are now free to a good home.

Petteri Nokelainen is reportedly on waivers to be bought out.

Jack Capuano thought tonight was better than last night. Portland’s shot total goes to his defense, obviously. He thought Justin DiBenedetto had a better night than in recent games, moving his feet a little more, he said, but he wished DiBenedetto would shoot more.

Actually, he wished a lot of them would shoot more.

“I thought we had chances in this game from the top of the circles, and we didn’t shoot,” Capuano said. “We just have to understand, when we get in those areas, it’s good to shot. It doesn’t have to be perfect.”

One too many passes sometimes led to passes in each other’s skates. There were times, I said in passing to someone, they looked as if they hadn’t played together. “They haven’t,” he said. Line combinations switched up to start and switched up again in the third, with only Smith-Moore-Bentivoglio sticking together.

“We’ve just got to keep it simple,” Bentivoglio said.

“We’re successful offensively when we throw pucks at the net.”

Like, for instance, when Anton Klementyev put a low shot on net for Bentivoglio to deflect home late.

—–

The low glass here got the Sound Tigers for three delay penalties in two nights. And as tweeted: Jon Gleed wound up in the box four times in two nights, which had people wondering up here. Get this: In his first 38 games, he was responsible for only 12 opposition power plays.

Chris Botta noted Sportsnet’s report that the Islanders will train in China in the fall. Saw Katie Strang’s tweet that it’s not said to be finalized. But if so, since Bridgeport’s first year, they’ll have gone, what, Lake Placid to Wheeling to Yarmouth to Halifax to Saskatoon to Shanghai*. Keep up that trend, and where can you go? Australia? Some farther part of Antarctica? Tranquility Base?

Prescout. Still no Fritz, but the Admirals win late. They should beat the Sound Tigers to Bridgeport by at least a few minutes.

Thinking on the ride up: What if they played the Pro Bowl with schoolyard rules? No running plays… blitzing only after counting to “five Mississippi” out loud (but going on “four Mississippi,” of course)… only one first down allowed per drive… Heck, I might watch that. Failing that, I’m down with Joe Posnanski’s suggestion to turn it into Tecmo Super Bowl, give each team only eight plays and have a fan call them out.

And RIP, Jane Jarvis and Tom Brookshier.

*-Go to Google Maps. Put in Shanghai. Get directions from Uniondale. Don’t miss Step 119.

I just figured I’d missed one, but it was confirmed after the game: The flow of that third period and the pressure Bridgeport put on Springfield were so intense, they missed two of the three promotional time outs in the third period. You can’t take them after an icing, during a penalty or in the last two minutes.

Bridgeport never gave them a chance.

Look, the Falcons proved for five periods that they’re gamers, despite the disastrous season this has become. With that goalie back in net, they’re a lot tougher. But that third period, especially after the flat second, was ridiculous for Bridgeport.

You kept peeking up to the board, making sure it still said “18.” And it did.

The forecheck was ferocious. Pucks stayed in the zone. They blocked shots. Maybe the most-dangerous moment was an icing with 2:16 left, but Greg Moore won the draw.

The Sound Tigers had gone through a third period of their own without a shot once, even went through the ensuing OT without a shot, too: the Binghamton Senators’ first night of existence, Oct. 11, 2002 (the Fog Game). That one’s got company, though Matt Nickerson (after at least 24 minutes without rubber on Scott Munroe) and Liam Reddox put shots on in overtime. But the Falcons iced the puck with 33.7 seconds left in overtime. Tyler Haskins won that draw. And they kept it in, and Mark Flood went to the net for his seventh shot.

—-

They’re 10-3 beyond regulation now, including 6-1 at four-on-score. “Overtime, I know, is always kind of exciting for myself and, I know, a lot of the guys,” Dustin Kohn said. “One thing is we probably get some breaks and we capitalize on our chances. We’re happy to keep getting extra points in overtime.” On the six overtime goals this year, defensemen are 3-2-5. Nice play by Kohn at the left point to wait out the defender, get him down and get the shot through for Flood’s deflection.

Sean Bentivoglio is 1-3-4 in overtime this year, and until tonight only Rob Collins (2-2-4 in 2004-05) had scored four points in extra time in a season for this team. All-time, only Jeff Hamilton (6-1-7) and Collins (2-4-6) have more overtime points than his 2-3-5, though Trevor Smith (0-5-5) and Mark Wotton (3-1-4) are active and on his tail.

Morency Bobblehead-Night Fun: “I told Dustin, you ruined it for Pascal,” Capuano said. “He was going to to be the first shooter if it got to the shootout.” Only ’cause Gillies was scratched, to be sure.

Ray Emery faces only 14 shots and stops 12 in his Phantom rehab start. (That’s the prescout, too, BTW.) Tim McManus wraps up Emery’s evening, which is probably his only Glens Falls appearance.

Isles draft pick Anders Lee was named to the USHL All-Star Game.

From Bill Ballou in Worcester this morning: “The Sharks have never beaten a ‘Z’ goalie in regular-season play (0-3 Matt Zaba, 0-2 Jeff Zatkoff).”

Awesome: New York (Midtown and Downtown Manhattan, at least), 1910. Madison Square Garden is the Stanford White Garden, still off Madison Square. Penn Station is in place but not to open for a few more months; everyone else is still ferrying from Jersey. The Manhattan Bridge and Queensboro Bridge are shown as under construction, though they opened the year before. Awesome.

Day off tomorrow. Planning on a livechat Tuesday at 1:30.

Spread your attention all over this thing. There’s the goalie, who apparently drifted over to Mike Schroeder late in the second period for a little chat, then didn’t come back for the third. He said it’s “just a little tightness in my leg,” unrelated to the other injuries. We’ll see what happens tomorrow.

“He knows his body,” Jack Capuano said. “He looked good. He was warmed up, ready to go. … He was square to the puck. His rebound control was great.”

(Not like he had anything to push it for in a 6-1 game, either.)

There’s the defense, which was excellent throughout. Springfield didn’t do a whole lot that didn’t come with an extra attacker, whether the conventional way (Fretter’s second) or the pull-your-goalie delayed-penalty assault (Fretter’s first).

Then there’s the offense, all over Springfield for the second game in a row (13-5 in two games? Yikes.) You get the usual suspects, and then you get the daily double of Gillies and Morency. They made it look pretty easy.

“Again, the guys were playing the system,” said Sean Bentivoglio, who hit 20 points (10-10-20) with two goals. “Everyone’s on the same page now.”

Now, this was two games against a team that’s reeling, winless in eight, missing its workhorse goalie (I mean really missing him). Keeping it up against a team that’s winless in six will mean something. Keeping it going beyond that? Guess that’s kind of the whole point.

—-

Kohn: lower body strain, missed the third. Wondered if it had anything to do with a hit he took from Kip Brennan that stopped him for a second, but Capuano said no, it was a strain.

DiPietro said he wasn’t sure what this might mean for his scheduled start Tuesday.

The goal was only Gillies’ seventh in the AHL and eighth as a pro. He had gone 88 games for Albany and Bridgeport without a goal since Nov. 3, 2007; he had gone 60 games without a point since Feb. 27, 2008. He has four game misconducts in 13 Bridgeport games. This one is in the other category, though — the others were for elbowing, for being an aggressor, and for a secondary altercation. I think that gets him off the suspension hook for now, the automatic one at least. A reaction to a hard hit that smacked his head into the wall, he said.

Bridgeport’s first too-many-men penalty of the season.

Three penalty shots by Christmas, which is the same pace as 2005-06, when they set the team record with four. (For whatever that’s worth.) And five goals in a period ties a team record achieved four times now.

Hartford named Dane Byers its captain before the game.

Remember Doug Nolan? You’re completely forgiven if not; you’re an absolute Friend of the Blog if you know the Sound Tigers trivia question to which he’s the answer. Oh, point*? Manchester signed him to a pro tryout. Shawn Bates might be a little fresher in your memory; he signed an AHL deal with the Monarchs. Coming back from Austria, he has to clear AHL waivers.

Matt Spiller’s AHL stay, meanwhile, didn’t last long; apparently a guy coming back from Europe (like Spiller) has to be on an AHL contract by Dec. 15 to play in the league. (Or an NHL contract and assigned.) No PTOs allowed.

As noted earlier, Cult Hero Andy Chiodo returned to Wachovia Arena tonight. Dustin Jeffrey spoiled it in overtime, though the Sens tied it on an extra-attacker goal late.

Via James Mirtle, a fascinating Red Fisher interview with Chris Nilan.

Slava Fetisov played again, even if it was only once? Wow.

Earl Pomerantz, just back from heart surgery, reminisces on Foster Hewitt.

Another Old Hoss Radbourn classic.

And the invisible tagline (hover over the strip) of this xkcd cartoon is awesome. (Strip’s not bad, either.)

*-I never promise a point, do I? Good.

Why Munroe back to back, getting a win and making bigger saves than the raw 21 saves might necessarily indicate?

“Just changing it up,” Jack Capuano said. “I don’t know where the rotation’s going to go. Maybe Scotty will go against his old team, then we’ll get Lawson a couple of games. … We’ve got to get them feeling comfortable, too.”

(Asked Munroe about some of the bigger saves, including two or three good chances for NHL star Ryan O’Marra: “You’ve got to (make them),” he said.)

And what about going without the lids in warmup?

“Sometimes you just do something to rally the troops,” Greg Mauldin said.

Well, it worked out.

“We had good pressure on them, but we were keeping the third guy high. They weren’t getting many odd-man rushes,” Munroe said.

They talked about the week of practice, the focus on keeping things simple, working on tightening up the systems. They looked much more consistent with them.

Springfield caught a break to end the second period, when Greg Moore’s stick broke, and took advantage. Bridgeport got one in overtime, when two Falcons hopped off the ice, and took advantage.

—-

Bridgeport stayed out of the box. Amazing. Three power-plays against, one for only seven seconds; that’s the fewest in nine games.

The Falcons took a couple of penalties for some nasty hits and had some other hard ones that weren’t penalized. “They were playing hard, we were playing hard,” said Bentivoglio, who took one that looked uglier than, maybe, it was in the second period. But Greg Mauldin, who took three or four vicious hits and kept going, was proud of they way they battled through that, pointing to one time when Jesse Joensuu took a hit behind the net, went down but still had the puck when he got up.

Prescout. Maybe they won’t be happy.

Len DiCostanzo had been with Mississippi in the SPHL and spent some time with Charlotte before getting a concussion. Hope Matt Broyles comes back from the flu as well as Kyle Okposo did. (Though the Big Club gave up a lead, too.)

Four overtime wins is already halfway to the team record (eight, 2003-04) and more than they had in three complete seasons.

Faith Night here, which helps account for the attendance: 5,479. I have this urge to read my Bible. Gonna try to beat the kids out of here.

Daniel Tkaczuk signed with Charlotte.

Syracuse signed a long-term lease to stick around up there.

How about Central, smoking New Canaan 42-7 to get back to the FCIAC football title game?

And best of luck to Mike Murphy in his treatment.

You know it’s a good night for a team when you have to work to pick only three stars. DiBenedetto-Lawson-Bentivoglio is a fine choice, but I can’t leave Marcinko out.

Not sure how I could leave Bentivoglio out of mine, either. “Sean Bentivoglio was outstanding,” Capuano said. “He blocked some shots. He scored the short-handed goal. We need to play with heart and desperation, the way Benti played.”

The combination of effort and achievement have to make this the best game of the first 10. Solid effort, hard work on the penalty kill, sacrifice (would love to have the blocked-shot count), and four whole goals.

And they’re on pace for another 48 wins, too.

—

DiBenedetto’s postgamers have been coachspeak to the point of comedy. (Granted, I’m no Edward R. Murrow, neither.) Tried to break him out of it and asked if he was expecting the first goal to be disallowed for some inexplicable reason. He chuckled an “I dunno” and went into the great-feeling-credit-my-linemates bit. We’ll get him eventually.

Capuano said Haskins was held out with an upper-body injury. Kohn and Mauldin were held out after blocking shots. (Yes, even that is a “lower-body injury.”) None sounded too severe. No details on Koskinen, even confirmation that he’s injured, are available at present. Hopefully more in the next couple of days. (They’re off tomorrow as usual after three-in-three.)

Bridgeport scored on four of its first six penalty-shot attempts; the Sound Tigers are 0-for-6 since then.

This ice is coming out for the circus. They’re striking the set as we speak I type.

A nice appreciation of Bill Chadwick. As tweeted, I never heard him call a game (nor, obviously, saw him call a penalty), but I heard all the stories. Last night’s postgame header is in my vocabulary for good.

Apologies for the lack of communication. Spent an hour and a half on the phone with the phone company yesterday. Tech support says my line is bad. Maintenance says my line is good. Dollars to donuts says I’ll try something different if changing the jack fails.

Anyway.

Trevor Gillies has been hit with a two-game suspension for his part in the brawl Saturday in Wilkes-Barre. He’ll miss the weekend. Drew Fata received a four-game suspension in the same press release. Haven’t heard what he did.

Joel Rechlicz was in town and skating with Gillies on a shortened fifth line; Pascal Morency was with Haskins and Martin, because Sean Bentivoglio was given a day off, Capuano said. A good day to get a breather. Capuano said the other day he was upset at the conditioning level? At the end of a 45-minute practice, he had them sprinting. Three times, goal line to blue line, goal line to red line, goal line to far blue, goal to goal. That’s about a half a mile of stops and starts in full gear. “I didn’t like our third period,” Capuano said.

Micheal Haley remains out, and since he has a doctor’s appointment on the Island on Thursday, it doesn’t sound all that promising. “Upper body” is the only report.

Meanwhile, Allentown may be a little closer. (HT: Dartmouth writer Tris Wykes.)

And forget Houston. The official unofficial nonlocal local team is Olimpija Ljubljana. I count five Tigers and a Beast.

Bridgeport had two things going from the start: The Haskins line, and Nathan Lawson.

Jonathan had a ridiculously amazing Penguins stat over on his blog the other day: The Penguins utterly annihilated non-division opponents in the first 10 minutes here last year, outscoring them 15-0.

Good gravy.

“Wotts spoke about that, that they were going to come out (aggressively) in the first 10 minutes,” Lawson said. “Luckily our defensemen blocked guys out.”

Lawson was phenomenal. The kids handled the pressure even as the Penguins pressured. Romano, DiBenedetto and Martin each made key plays leading to one of the goals. Katic played with poise.

Even if there are only — quote-unquote — 5,800 people here, it’s not an easy place to play.

“It was a much different atmosphere than the playoffs,” DiBenedetto said. “At the same time, we knew they were going to be ready.”

Bridgeport handled it, made the big play of its own at the end, and is 3-0.

—

A real cynic would point out that the Sound Tigers’ only other 3-0 start was 2004-05, a young team that wound up out of the playoffs. Just dumb coincidence.

It is very weird to think that this is the only trip here this year, barring the very-unlikely April return.

Mentioned it on Twitter: I almost turned to Tom Venesky and said something about how, gee, you dress a line like that, and you expect a bloodbath, and nothing’s happening. Two seconds later…

Guesting at Islanders Point Blank, Justin Bourne on Trevor Smith.

Bombulie was missed: at a wedding. Still tweeted, though.

The usual nail-the-visitors video: “Who’s your favorite tiger?” Tiger Woods, Tiger Chung Lee, Tony the Tiger (by far the biggest cheers), Daniel Striped Tiger… and the BST. Yeah: boos. (My favorite is still the New Year’s Eve 2004 video, with highlights from the playoff series set to a hard version of “Auld Lang Syne.” Have that on the hard drive somewhere.)

Ilya Zubov wasn’t in Bingo. They (prescout) probably were in trouble tonight even had he been there.

Late practice tomorrow.

And there are an awful lot of exclamation points in official Twitters. That’s all I’ll say. (You know it probably won’t be.)

A couple of weeks ago, maybe, this might have gone differently. Mikko Koskinen wasn’t as comfortable on the North American ice back then.

Um, the kid looked pretty comfortable tonight.

He has things to work on — he mentioned, especially, managing to cover up or get the puck to the corner when it’s in tight — but it was a solid first start, especially in that first 15 minutes, when Worcester could have run away with the evening. The Sound Tigers popped in three goals in a little over three minutes, and that was that.

(Literally. Until the bonus round.)

—

Bentivoglio, Haskins and Martin had a combined one point tonight, and that was Martin’s on the five-on-three, but they were buzzing, forechecking, wreaking some havoc for the second game in a row. “They’ve been good,” Capuano said. “They’re doing the right things at the right times. They understand the system. They believe what we’re trying to teach, and they’re having success. We hope to get more guys on the same page.” Was a little surprised to see they got only four shots to the net.

Eric Boguniecki in the dressing room afterward, visiting the folks, so he visited the boys. He’s still hoping to latch on somewhere.

Thanks to Gerry Cantlon: Junior Lessard landed in Finland with Ilves. And Mark Parrish landed in Norfolk on a PTO.

So the Devils trapped, and the Sound Tigers threw pucks around (did everyone put a pass behind Katic at one point tonight?), and it wasn’t always the prettiest game, but hey, you get a crowd like that (biggest announced crowd ever by five), you give them a win, a lot can be forgiven.

The Bentivoglio-Haskins reunion paid dividends. Haskins came out hitting, they drew a power play, and a pretty power play later, 1-0.

Six power plays later…

Weird first period to watch, that way. The second was a little better. The third wasn’t terrible, but… The ice, only skated on a few times and in a crowded house, couldn’t have been great, especially by the end of the night, and they were being too fancy on it. (At the same time, if Zharkov could have pulled the trigger, he’d have had two or three.)

In overtime, Haskins won a draw, got it to Bentivoglio, who got it back to MacDonald. MacDonald shot as Haskins went to the net. Goal.

Simple won out.

—

A moment of silence for Roy Boe before the game, eight years since he stepped out at center ice to introduce this Sound Tigers team.

Chris Elsberry’s column today is on the Sound Tigers’ on-ice results since 2002.

I never got Nighthawks tickets for reading. Darn it.

The Lighthouse deadline is gone, “and apparently (Charles) Wang’s patience is through, too,” Chris Botta writes. Then the kid went out and scored a goal.

Oh, Louis Robitaille. How you’ve been missed.

And so Bridgeport is tied for first with Springfield (with four former Sound Tigers), Worcester (spoiling Glens Falls’ return) and Manchester (coupla points for Kevin Westgarth).

Back-to-back Bombulie tweets tonight: “Wyatt Smith tips in a Chris Lee point shot as Eric Tangradi crashes the net. 1-0 WBS.” “@fornabaioctp No, the second assist didn’t go to Masi Marjamaki.” Smith finished with two goals and an assist in his first Penguins game.

Two goals for Peter Zingoni tonight.

Jason Krog was named captain of the Wolves.

Austin to San Antonio is about 80 miles. The American Statesman didn’t staff the Stars’ first game. Well, it was Friday night.

If Safety Graphic Fun isn’t in the RSS reader by now, I mean, c’mon.

Wha? OK, second source.

And deepest condolences to Phil Giubileo, whose brother passed away today.