Suddenly only one point out of playoff position again, the Sound Tigers put together some crazy kind of win today.
Counting Jeremy Colliton — which you know we shouldn’t — there were nine PTOs in Bridgeport’s lineup. Half of the skaters. And they won.
And they shut out the highest-scoring team in the league.
“Three games in three nights, they came out flying. They were all over us the first 10 minutes,” Kevin Poulin said. “We did a great job the last 10 minutes of the periods. We took the momentum. Hockey’s about momentum. We scored. We did a great job defensively.”
Like last night, the thinking was that at least Poulin got to see all the shots. They added up, to 40, but he had that chance.
Oh, and then he made a bunch of acrobatic, sprawling saves, in the splits, that two-on-one late, on and on. Yeah, he’s OK.
“He’s unbelievable,” David Ullstrom said. That works, too.
You could joke and say that enough players have changed around here that it wasn’t really eight games in 13 games for all of them. But they fought their way through this grueling stretch, which followed another grueling stretch, and in between those stretches, their world changed.
In fact, the last time Norfolk was here was the last game Jack Capuano coached here. They took the next day off. They came in Monday morning and didn’t find Capuano.
Eight games in 13 days later…
“I can’t say enough about the team,” Pat Bingham said. “The amount of games we’ve played in a short amount of time, it’s physically and mentally taxing. It was a quick turnaround after two emotional games with Hartford against a very good Norfolk team.”
And they won. The PTOs were as solid as ever; newbie Eric Castonguay got the spotlight, but you had to love Chris Blight’s game. He helped set up the first two.
Blight said it was an opportunity for those guys to show what they can do. They’re playing against a Norfolk team with a lot of skill and some experience.
“Since he’s played here,” Bingham said, “he hasn’t played a bad one yet. It takes a special kind of player.”
….
Blight, in his 39th AHL game (plus a playoff game), finally put one in the net. You could hear it in his voice, how important it was. Great stuff in the gamer. Gave Svendsen credit for the good play to get it to him.
Castonguay went right back to Reading afterward. Had a feeling, because a guy I’m pretty sure was him had a bag packed. (It’s like training camp. I’ve been around Blight for almost two weeks and had to think twice to make sure it was him.)
Katie Strang just tweeted minor pectoral strain for Bailey; day-to-day. Not sure about the other seven injured. They’re off Monday; we’ll see who’s where Tuesday morning.
Islanders draft pick Jared Spurgeon got a call-up to Minnesota. He could have also been the first 46 in Sound Tigers history.
Prescout. The Falcons had a lead, which changed in 29 seconds. (Three penalties. Good times.)
Game 2 attendance in Hartford: 3,012.
Mike Vaccaro on The Spectrum.
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