Soundin' Off

Son of Nighthawk? Eight points? Awesome.

It’s Dean Arsene Bobblehead Night at Portland. And I’m stuck at home.

Bridgeport seeks its eighth consecutive road win and to continue a 10-0-0-1 streak since a loss New Year’s Eve. A win or a shootout loss would effectively (counting shootout losses as ties) if not officially (’cause, y’know, “loss”) tie the franchise’s second-longest unbeaten streak.

We’ll be listening to Jeff Mannix tonight and following Jamie, Dan Hickling, Chris Roy and Paul Betit. Jamie tweeted this afternoon that it appears Anders Nilsson gets the call, and it appears Trevor Gillies and Sean Backman are out.

If it stays as it was in practice, it’d be something like

F: McNeely-Cizikas-Romano
DiBenedetto (A)-Colliton (C)-Howes
Haley-Mouillierat-Ullstrom
Riley-Frischmon (A)-Marcinko
D: Landry-Wishart
Gentile-Donovan
Ness-Oleksy
G: Nilsson
Poulin

R: J.Koharski. L: Bathe, Andrews.

The Islanders announced they’ve put Anton Klementyev on unconditional waivers. That’ll cut ties, which I guess isn’t the most unexpected thing after the past month.

Meanwhile, the lost blog posts of February and March 2006 are restored (with original comments on the posts). Please contain your excitement. (The reason for the project is contained here. Will call it out at some point.)

More as the pregame stuff begins from up there. Figure c. 6:25 warmup, and I think it’s a 15-minute pregame up there, so c. 6:45 on the radio.

–Pogge for Portland.

–Jeff’s on at 6:45 indeed.

–Nobody ever picks the goalies in those Twitter first-goal contests. I’ve got Anders Nilsson in the first period. Game on.

–Never mind… Ullstrom scores off the bar and in, 23 seconds into the game. They talk about it for a bit, but it’s in.

–Not the fastest Sound Tigers goal into a game (12 seconds, Trevor Smith, 11/1/09 at Providence — they lost). But if Bridgeport gets the shutout, it’d tie for what I am pretty sure is the earliest game-winner (Rob Collins, 23 seconds, 1/21/06 at Wilkes-Barre).

–But not two minutes later, Michael Stone scores off a turnover to tie it.

–Jeff notes that Portland is on an 0-for-20 skid on the power play after Bridgeport kills a Haley interference minor.

–Haley vs. Hollweg, a rematch of opening night. First AHL fight since Dec. 18 for Haley, if I’m not missing one. Bridgeport to a power play soon after as Ullstrom taken down. Had two people ask yesterday what was up with Ullstrom, who had one point in the past five games. A goal and a drawn penalty in 6:41? I’m guessing he’s OK tonight.

–Big chance for Bridgeport with an 81-second five-on-three. Pogge apparently robs Cizikas.

–As O’Sullivan returns, Ness takes a penalty to even things up. Bridgeport is 3-for-13 on five-on-threes; all but one miss is longer than 30 seconds. But quickly Stone takes a tripping penalty, which means the Ness penalty never produces a power play. (Well, shouldn’t say never. Jamie’s calling ‘em tight.)

–That’s Jamie Koharski, anyway. No idea how Palatini’s calling them.

–Romano, back in the lineup, redirects a Cizikas feed to make it 2-1 Bridgeport. McNeely with the second assist with 4:00 left in the period. Cizikas’ second scoring streak of six or better in a row.

–As Ullstrom takes a penalty, Jeff runs us down the whole Portland lineup. Sweet.

F: Watkins (A)-Miele-MacLean
O’Sullivan-Pouliot-Beaudoin
Trotter-Bolduc-Hextall
Werek-Hollweg (A)-Szwarz
D: Arsene (C)-Stone
Oystrick-Rundblad
Ross-Goncharov
G: Pogge
Cheverie

It’s 2-1 Bridgeport after one.

–Milwaukee-Peoria is reportedly delayed. The referee’s car had a flat tire. Twice.

–Period 2 under way.

–A neutral-zone Trevor Frischmon shot goes off Pogge’s stick, rolls up and over his shoulder, Jeff says, to make it 3-1 at 77 seconds of the second. Marc Cheverie, who’s 2-0 in relief, comes on. Bridgeport chases a goalie for the second time in two visits here. (Jamie on Twitter says Marcinko put the bouncer into the zone.)

–Sheet corrected to Marcinko from Frischmon.

–Shots were, I think, 10-7 Bridgeport after one. I saw 10-8 Bridgeport on the gamesheet… Ah, jeez.

The box is here. Also, prescout.

So anyway. I saw 10-8 for first-period shots early in the second. They’re now 10-9. Though actually that might be two second-period shots just in the wrong place, because the individual shots still total seven. We’ll have to check back.

–DiBenedetto shoves one in from the side of the net at 11:47 of the second to make it 4-1.

–Ryan Hollweg goes hard into the boards attempting a check. He needs help to the room late in the second.

–The teams trade penalties back and forth in the late going of the period, and the Pirates will begin the third on the power play, but the period doesn’t end before Matt Donovan gets into his first fight as a pro against Marc-Antoine Pouliot. Ethan Werek then goes with Steve Oleksy at the end of the period. 4-1 Bridgeport after two.

–Shots 22-13 Bridgeport overall. Indeed 10-7 in the first, 12-6 Bridgeport in the second. There are 43 seconds on the power play, and Bridgeport has two defensemen in the box.

–The third period begins, and the Sound Tigers kill off the rest of the penalty.

–DiBenedetto scores on a two-on-one from Howes at 1:58 of the third, making it 5-1.

–Portland will have about a minute of five-on-three, with Romano in for a hook and Gentile joining him for delay of game… and quickly, Trotter puts one in. 5-2. Power play continues.

–Now Haley delay of game. A little less than a minute of two-man. (or a little more. Misheard Jeff, I guess.)

–Colliton delay of game. Crazy.

RT @thesoundtigers “Sound Tigers clear. Not out of play.” Heh. Back to even strength with a bit under 10 minutes left. Hollweg back for Portland.

–Manchester, which appears to be heading to overtime with Binghamton, has three delay-of-game minors tonight. Epidemic.

–Cizikas, flat on the ice, gets it to Romano to make it 6-2. Two goals for Romano. Two assists for Cizikas, who’s one off his pace, with 4:06 left.

–By the way, New Canaan’s Jack Downing had the tying goal for Binghamton with 5:29 left in the third.

–It ends Bridgeport 6, Portland 2, final.

–Casey Cizikas’ five-game goal-scoring streak, three-game three-point streak both end. Slumping.

–Marc-Andre Cliche scores on a power play for Manchester in overtime, so the Monarchs will come in off a win.

–”Guys stepped up,” Brent Thompson said. “DiBo. Ullstrom was dynamic. Cizikas.” He even credited Trevor Gillies’ presence: “his voice in practice, the way he pushes guys. It was a team win. But we haven’t done anything yet.”

He said he was proud of Donovan, getting into his first fight. “To me the unsung hero was Micheal Haley. He finished every hit. His physical presence gave Ullstrom room.” Nilsson played well. “We’re playing with confidence.” Romano (conceding a “hand injury”): “Tony was rewarded for going to the net. He played hard.”

Back at it tomorrow. (Actually, one more note: Hartford’s January nightmare ends in February.)

After today’s loss to Nashville, the Islanders sent Kevin Poulin back down.

A report from Yaroslavl has Anton Klementyev joining Lokomotiv. (Saw it from Dmitry Chesnokov on Twitter.) Certainly the logical destination. Anyway, the Islanders report no change in his status as far as they’re concerned.

(ObFWGoogle Translate is a different variety today, which throws cold water on all OBFWGT we’ve had: Somehow, though the original Russian says he played for the New York Islanders (“Нью-Йорк Айлендерс”), the translation renders that as “New Jersey.” Chilling.)

Elsewhere, the Lightning called up Trevor Smith.

Neat, as seen on Uni Watch: a 1947 short film (or perhaps 1948, as dated here with historical notes) on hockey in Montreal.

Always good for a read on this day: let freedom ring.

And finally, with Albany’s win over Adirondack today, first through fourth in the Berkshire League Northeast are separated by only two points, and first through fifth by five. (Granted, wildly differing games played, and on top of that, the Whale, in first place in the division, have only the seventh-best record in the conference. But still.)

Try it again: See you Tuesday. We’ll chat on this post.

Edit: To break stuff out from the chat, Nic Riopel and Joey Haddad (the latter after skating Tuesday) have been released from PTOs. Jeremy Colliton skated and is making progress. Also, regarding a late question, I spaced on Montoya: He was never on IR, as Eric Hornick noted on Twitter in the afternoon. Team won’t have an official practice Wednesday, but we’ll update as necessary.

Caught a few minutes with Garth Snow today about Anton Klementyev’s situation, which is basically unchanged; he’s suspended. “We intended to send him to the East Coast League to get him some playing time, and he in turn said he was going to Russia.”

–Had the idea of an ECHL stint come up before? “We talked about, and I don’t know the exact timing, a week prior to that, whether to get him 25 minutes of ice time, playing in more situations. It wasn’t going to be a long-term stint in the East Coast League, probably more like two or three weeks.”

–Is Klementyev in Russia now? Snow said he didn’t know. “I didn’t book his plane ticket.”

–What’s the future: “Like I said, he’s suspended right now, and we retain his rights. He made a decision to not honor his contract.”

–Would Snow bring him back to Bridgeport? “There’d have to be a lot of conversations going on. I can’t give you an informed answer without talking through it with all the parties, Anton, his agent, Brent (Thompson), with the players in the locker room. I don’t think it’s a positive situation when a player packs up and leaves his teammates.”

I left messages a couple of ways with Klementyev’s agent on Saturday but haven’t heard back.

….

Waiting on de Haan news. If I hear anything, it’ll probably go on Twitter first.

Buying single tickets Saturday in Bridgeport? Amanda Cuda notes that a $20 advance ticket will partly benefit the Norma F. Pfriem Breast Care Center at Bridgeport Hospital.

Jeff asked in the chat if the Sound Tigers had ever won three consecutive games by the same score. Turns out they had, in February 2002, winning three 3-2 games in a row. Interrupted in the search around 2006, I found later that they also won March 12, 13 and 19, 2010, by 3-2 scores, the first two in shootouts at Norfolk, the next one at Syracuse. He may be interested to know, too, that in January 2010, they played four consecutive 3-2 games… although they won the first two and lost the second two. (Or he may not.) They lost three consecutive 3-2 games Jan. 28-Feb. 4, 2011.

That fight at the Phantoms’ bench in Hershey over the weekend earned both Tom Sestito and Joel Rechlicz a one-game suspension. Troy Bodie of Syracuse got three games for a hit on Nathan Lawson.

Anaheim brought in Trent Yawney to Syracuse as associate head coach, though keeping Mark Holick around.

And RIP, Ron Caron.

The Islanders announced this afternoon that they’re suspending Anton Klementyev for refusing an assignment to Idaho (ECHL). Brent Thompson said they wanted him to go down and play a lot, and he declined. Not sure where he is, what’s next (we’ll presumably be keeping an eye on Russia) or much further at the moment.

Without him or Dylan Reese, Benn Olson goes back in on defense. After a little while with some extra bodies, the Sound Tigers are back to dressing their only healthy 18 skaters tonight after Brett Gallant suffered an injury in practice up here this week; Thompson said it wasn’t to the head, but wasn’t more specific.

So it’s DiBenedetto, Gillies (who have been skating), Colliton, Langkow, Marcinko (who’s continuing to recover well) and now Gallant out injured.

BRIDGEPORT
F: Haddad-Frischmon (A)-Riley
McNeely-Cizikas-Rakhshani
Haley (A)-Romano-Backman
Howes-Mouillierat-Aubin
D: de Haan-Wishart (A)
Donovan-Oleksy
Olson-Ness
G: Poulin
Riopel

PORTLAND
F: Trotter-Miele-MacLean
Duncan-Hextall-Watkins (A)
Hollweg (A)-Werek-Rome
Bloodoff-Szwarz-Hoffman
D: Summers-Oystrick
Arsene (C)-Stone
Eckford-Goncharov
G: McElhinney
Pogge

R: R. Fraser. L: Lovett, Bathe.

Times of note: Poulin would tie Peter Mannino’s livepuck-era individual record at 1:43 at the latest (we mentioned those extra-attacker issues the other night). At 3:10, the team ties the post-lockout record. At 17:52 of the first, Poulin would tie Rick DiPietro’s individual team record. The team would need to get 4:16 into overtime with a scoreless tie to tie the overall team record.

Thanks to a series of unrelated craziness, I was here way early, which meant I was here when Jeremy Colliton took his first twirl in some time. He went through a couple of light skating drills with Matt Bertani (though Justin DiBenedetto, coming out for power-play practice as Colliton finished, demanded that Bertani bag-skate him). Brent Thompson isn’t expecting Colliton for the weekend.

The defense pairs may have been tweaked a bit; thought I saw Donovan with Wishart and Ness with de Haan. Status quo otherwise here, though Arthur Staple believes both Trevor Frischmon and Dylan Reese will be on their way here today, and Ryan Strome will stick around up top as a spare for the moment. He has his expected Saturday-night lineup on the blog. Edit: Indeed, the Isles’ announcement is exactly that, Reese and Frischmon sent down.

From the paper: Today’s Anton Klementyev story.

Reminder: We chat Friday at 1:30.

Edit2: West Haven’s Joe Pereira signed with South Carolina of the ECHL.

Hockey Reference’s list of No. 65s in the NHL. An elite fraternity.

And I was driving home yesterday and realized that if I changed the station, I could listen to Gary Cohen call a ballgame on the radio again. Just about every thought that came to mind is found in that Greg Prince blog piece, so there it is.

The Islanders opened rookie camp Saturday morning. Coverage on the team’s site. The missing name: Anton Klementyev, who went to Yaroslavl for his old Lokomotiv team’s memorial service. (Lokomotiv has reportedly decided not to play this year.)

The Big Club will stream Monday’s and Tuesday’s rookie games on its site, with Chris King and Phil Giubileo. We’re hoping to get out there, too, on Monday, so maybe a liveblog or something.

Joe Meyers on a 40th-anniversary release of the Godspell soundtracks.

…..

On Sept. 10, 2001, I watched the Giants with my dad, did some work and went to bed late, figuring I’d call Steve Stirling in the afternoon the next day to check on the Islanders’ first day on the ice in Lake Placid.

It is difficult to believe we’ve traveled 10 years from then. Some days, it feels like yesterday. Some days, it feels like a lifetime.

We remember, not least because we couldn’t forget if we tried.

As has become traditional here, links to two songs:

No Sure Way, Loudon Wainwright III

The Bravest, Tom Paxton (a bit more than halfway down)

Hang on to your tear ducts.

That time of year. The rhythms all break down. Get a little depressed, just because it feels as if there’s somewhere I’m supposed to be, except… Well, I joked with Pat Bingham on Sunday night and asked him what time they were skating Tuesday. Instead, Tuesday morning, I was out shopping. (Wish I were home, actually, because that’s when the Capuano news broke. As noted in the chat, my wireless router couldn’t take it at the end of the season and stopped working. Poor thing.)

Anyway. Here’s the wrap story. We await word on the coaches, and then from there, we… well, they’re talking about a press conference late this month about taking over the building, and then we’ll go from there to the draft (No. 5 — I blame Kerry Gwydir, who replied to TSN’s question like a true former PR guy with an answer to something else entirely) and free agency in a little over two months. Rookie camp sometime thereafter, TBA. And then another two months to training camp.

If you click on below, there are a slew of selected quotes from several people I could track down for a few minutes Sunday or Monday.

…..

And after that, it’s summertime blog mode. We’ll follow the playoffs and the Worlds and anything else that pops up.

Hope you’ve enjoyed six years of this stuff, and our little looks back during the 10th season, and the weekly chats and all (and if you enjoy those, thank Sean).

Many thanks as always to the bosses and the colleagues. Thanks to Jamie Palatini; to Kimber, Katrina and Jesse; to Phil Giubileo for the constant blog plugs; to Jason and A.J. up in Springy and the PR folks all over the league — particularly Jason, for taking power-play and Clear-Day questions at all hours; and to the fellow beat writers around the league, many of whom are still linked to the right. Thanks to players, staff, coaches, and Mike and Leni for putting up with me.

Most of all, thank you for being here.

…..

(more…)

You may have seen this report on Monday that several Swedish teams have interest in Robin Figren. Asked him about the report this morning. “I heard,” Figren said. “I’ve got nothing really to say about it. I’ve got one and a half months here, and I’m going to put everything I’ve got into this and see where it takes me next year. I know there’s interest in me, and I’m really happy about it. But that’s all I can say. I’m going to put everything I have here.”

So has he made a decision to go back home, or would he stay here? “I told my agent, I told everybody, I really don’t want to think about it,” that he’s focused on playing his best through the last quarter of the season here.

So there’s that.

As noted in the chat, Anton Klementyev is officially now out for the year. He had surgery on a fractured fibula, which he suffered breaking up that rush late in the win over Manchester. And also as noted in the chat, a bunch of guys had the day off this morning. A few stepped off early. (One per drill for a while, actually.) There’s a lot of time until they play again.

Edit: About 5 today they Sound Tigers announced they’ve released Jason Pitton.

So that’s three games this week, and three games where someone has snapped a long scoring drought. Today, Wednesday’s guy buried three more. And the guy breaking the drought Sunday? Only scored the game-winner.

One guy can’t do it all, not if you’re going to win. They’ve had other guys chipping in. Certainly, those guys were doing things besides scoring. But when they’re putting pucks in the net on top of it?

“You expect yourself to score. They expect themselves to score,” Brandon Svendsen said. “We’re working in practice on going to the net. … Ully, he’s doing a great job. He’s going to the net, and he’s scoring goals. We got four last night. We got four tonight.”

And for the first time in 29 days, four was enough. Four was one more than enough. Svendsen helped make sure of it, blocking a shot in the last 10 seconds — unfortunately blocking it with his hand. Svendsen was hurting but said he thought he’d be OK. Anton Klementyev broke up a rush with just under seven minutes to play and had to be helped off; he was limping around the room, which is substantially more pressure than he was putting on his left ankle when he left the ice.

“There were a lot of solid efforts,” Pat Bingham said.

“I’ve been telling the guys, we can play with everybody. We weren’t taking that next step to beat anybody. Today, we did.”

The penalty kill was sharp, for the most part, except that one rush that turned into the first Manchester goal. Mikko Koskinen was pretty good. The power play only got one chance, but it made it count.

They didn’t have Dylan Reese after warmup (didn’t catch what happened; something upper body, I think). Down to five defensemen, those guys did solid work.

“We were able to dress an extra forward, and I challenged the forwards to take over the game,” Bingham said. “The forwards were trying, getting in on the forecheck, working, competing.” Guys you don’t expect to hit were hitting. Bourbeau fought. Svendsen fought when he didn’t like a hit that Muzzin put on Rob Hisey; despite the extra roughing minor Svendsen got, “those are the kind of penalties we’ll kill off any time,” Bingham said.

It all added up to a win. Remember those?

….

And given the header, my lead should have been “The end came for Bridgeport (today),” right? Hey, only 15 points back of Hartford with 24 to play.

Ullstrom’s was the 23rd hat trick (not counting Jason Krog’s in the playoffs) in team history. They seem to cluster a bit, date-wise. There have been five in April. There are two on Dec. 16 and two others within a week on either side. And now they have one on Feb. 20, Feb. 22 (Bergenheim’s four, 2006) and Feb. 23 (Hunter, 2003). What does that mean? Nothing. Sorry. Thanks for reading.

Bingham had lots of praise for Ullstrom: “He’s been playing quite well even when he wasn’t producing. His play without the puck, his faceoffs, his D-zone coverage, everything he’s doing.”

Nice BBC piece on the history of “Mack the Knife“. Brecht, Weill, Lenya, Darin, Fitzgerald, Armstrong, Gollum, and a content warning out front**. Tell me how you go wrong. (Limited time only, BTW.)

Rediscovered while poking around YouTube for the Gallant-Rechlicz fight (OK, just killing time): And why can’t we understand Dutch? (I imagine this is what it’s like to be on drugs. Everything looks and sounds familiar, but it doesn’t quite sound right.)

Team’s off tomorrow. See you Tuesday. We’ll have a chat at 1:30 as usual.

*-Seriously, I saw that headline so many times in four years of college that it’s simply my default. Sorry.
**-Which I’m just gonna assume is for the Marxism, not the murder and mayhem.

Nathan Lawson insists that he never felt bad. He was giving up those goals, sure.

“I felt I was still playing well, like usual,” Lawson said. “I wasn’t getting bounces. It was hitting the post and going in. It was hitting me and somehow going through.”

Not much of that in this one. Two deflections. The first one was one of the few times, by Pat Bingham’s reckoning, that there was too much traffic in front of Lawson. The second one, there wasn’t much Lawson could have done.

Otherwise, the man made 43 saves.

“Yeah, but don’t be misled by the shots, even if they were accurate,” Bingham said. “I thought he saw just about everything.

“I noticed he was on top of his crease. He was really confident. … He not only made the save, but he ate it. He got us a whistle.”

On that five-on-three in the second, Jeremy Williams’ shot hit the crossbar, and Lawson started expecting the one-timers. He stopped five shots there.

Now, he has stopped 69 of 72 shots in two games.

“I felt really good. I had a really good warmup. I had a really good soccer game to start,” Lawson said. “It just carried over into the game.”

And the team came back twice. The trouble, as Rakhshani said, was they didn’t beat Chad Johnson once in the shootout, so they gave themselves absolutely no chance to get Lawson a win once he got them through 65 minutes.

“We’ve got a good group here, guys who care about winning every single night,” Rakhshani said. “They don’t care what the scoreboard says.”

…..

Bailey took a hit in the first period, then felt a pull on a slap shot later in the first period. They’ll take a look at it Sunday, but it’s not supposed to be serious.

I’ve lost track of how many great scoring chances Olivier Labelle has in the past three games. No luck.

Lines got very mix-and-match after Bailey left. Lots of different combinations. We’ll see what they look like tomorrow, if Bailey can’t go. Doesn’t sound like any of the injured were ready to be back, either.

Bingham, who wanted his guys to shoot last night in the shootout, saw several more dekes tonight (though you hadda love the Robin Figren wind-up slapper). Bridgeport was 1-for-11 in two nights and were lucky to get a win out of that. “It’s definitely an area we need to practice,” Bingham said, “to really come to a conclusion about who’s got the best shootout moves.”

Second-biggest regular-season crowd in Hartford. Second-biggest regular-season crowd to watch a Sound Tigers game (first Nassau Coliseum game, 16,297, during the lockout; last game of the ’02 Final was also bigger, 15,132, at Rosemont, Ill.)

Klementyev declined an interview request: “No English.” He declined with better English than I speak**. We’ll get him.

Haley got a stick up in Zuccarello’s face in the third; no call. They showed the replay almost as often as the Isles showed the Minard goal in the playoffs two years ago.

Speaking of Chris Minard… Good gravy. Tomas Tatar: 2-5-7, plus-7. Two minus-5s the other way. It’s the highest-scoring game in the AHL since the Connecticut Whale weren’t even the Hartford Wolf Pack yet: They were the Binghamton Rangers, and their opponent was from Baltimore.

Edit: On another good-gravy note, how about Greg Mauldin?

*-Because sometimes the whale wins
**-And sometimes write

A more intimate gathering this afternoon for Game 2. (I don’t know about you guys, but I always loved going to the second game. Particularly when I was going to NHL games. Hoopla’s fun, but then you get to Game 2, and it’s the diehards and the ones who wanted to get into opening night but couldn’t. Of course, then I got older, and it got harder to get into Game 2.)

(But I digress.)

Klementyev out, Motherwell in, and otherwise it looks like last night (except Koskinen actually led them out.)

Two refs for the first time this season, the first time of around 20.

BRIDGEPORT
F: M. Martin-Ullstrom-Joensuu (A)
DiBenedetto-Hisey-Rakhshani
Haley-Marcinko-Figren
Bourbeau-Romano-Yablonski
D: Katic-Reese (A)
Kohn-Hamonic
Motherwell-Wotton (C)
G: Koskinen
J. Martin

MANCHESTER
F: King-Azevedo-Holloway
Moller (A)-Elkins-Kozun
Clune-Zeiler-Meckler
Nolan-Johnson-Pelech
D: Martinez (A)-Kolomatis
Campbell-Mullen
Hill-Hickey (A)
G: Ersberg
Zatkoff

R: Charron, Cozzan. L: Simeon, Galvin.

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.