Soundin' Off

Tony Romano and Jon Landry return to the lineup, with Kael Mouillierat and Mark Katic removed. It’s naturally Kevin Poulin in goal.

The Whale have 2011 first-rounder J.T. Miller on for warmup, and from the rushes, looks like he’s in and Steve Moses is out. Edit: Appearances hold up. Otherwise, the same for the Whale. Bridgeport tweaks two lines with Romano in — nothing too unrecognizable — and Landry slots right back in with Aaron Ness.

BRIDGEPORT
F: Persson-Cizikas-Rakhshani
DiBenedetto (A)-Frischmon (A)-Backman
Ullstrom-Nelson-Haley
Riley-Marcinko-Romano
D: de Haan-Wishart (A)
Donovan-Oleksy
Ness-Landry
G: Poulin
Reiter

CONNECTICUT
F: Audy-Marchessault – Newbury (A)-Thomas
Hrivik-Wellman-Miller
Grant-Tessier-Deveaux
Bourque-Owens-Thuresson
(Moses-scratch)
D: Bell (A)-Redden (C)
Erixon-Nightingale
Valentenko-Vernace
G: Talbot
Johnson

R: J.Koharski, McIsaac. L: Galvin, Colby.

The three needed to get Tony Romano eligible are presumably Jeremy Colliton, Tyler McNeely (who’s been termed day-to-day for a few days) and Katic, with the surgery recovery.

And you’ve probably seen by now that former Sound Tigers winger Raffi Torres received one of the longest suspensions in NHL history for his hit on Marian Hossa.

Edit: BTW, not sure if I’ve mentioned anywhere… the “game group” for practice has included tonight’s lineup along with Mike Halmo, Mouillierat and Scott Howes. Landry made it seven defensemen yesterday, so these six plus Katic. The other players have skated in the second group.

Jon Landry joined the main group for practice, which included some power-play work, and Tony Romano appeared more involved as well. Could they be getting in for Game 2? “Landry’s day-to-day; we’ll see how he feels tomorrow,” Brent Thompson said. On Romano: “We’re toying with the decision. I’m confident with all the guys, especially the guys who’ve been here all year.”

By the numbers (or at least the crazy ones I play with), I had the Sound Tigers as a slight favorite, basically 55 percent to 45 percent, before yesterday. Now it’s more like 67-33 for the Whale. A Bridgeport win tomorrow turns that back around (though slightly closer to even). A Bridgeport loss, and it’s like 86-14. But they play the games, etc.

Game 1 reading:

Our Game 1 gamer and notes.

Jeff Jacobs on Cam Talbot. Paul Doyle on the Talbot decision. (Tip of cap, sir.) The tag team of Mitch Beck and Bruce Berlet (you guys, too).

And the Whale made J.T. Miller’s arrival official. Apparently he was in town last night. We’ll see if he gets in.

Norfolk’s a darned good team. Toss St. John’s into the mix wherever you’d like, but the Admirals and the Penguins are probably two of the best teams Bridgeport faces.

Darned, darned good power play, too. Ranked second in the league for a reason. Great puck movement. Good work in front of the net.

“Obviously our kill has to be better,” Thompson said. “There’s no reason they get those goals.”

Well, they had enough chances. And Bridgeport had only one. Whatever earned Bridgeport that bench minor after the winning goal, it sure appeared the Sound Tigers were even more vociferous on the ice afterward.

Even after two periods, it didn’t feel like the kind of game that merited a 5-1 disparity in power plays. There was stuff going on all over the ice. After three, 8-1 seemed outlandish.

Again, that’s not to take away from Norfolk. Every chance the Admirals win this game no matter what, that some of those back-door passes happen anyway.

And it wasn’t that the Sound Tigers didn’t think they deserved their own calls (well, some of them, anyway), but earning only one power play of their own didn’t seem to sit well.

Bridgeport, short-handed, gets through a weekend with the Whale, the Penguins and the Admirals and gets two points out of it, a bounce or two away from more (though really a bounce or two away from fewer, too). Three good teams, three good battles, three playoff-style contests. This one felt like that for a while, anyway.

“This team’s learning what it takes in these big games, how hard it’s going to be,” Thompson said. “It’s only going to get harder.”

….

A game misconduct against Bridgeport popped up on the box score after the game was over. Not sure to whom or for what, though the rule covers verbal abuse of officials. Can’t imagine what they were talking about. Edit: apparently assessed against Eric Boguniecki.

Trevor Frischmon, who seems to generate a breakaway a week, buried one short-handed. “It was nice to actually finish one,” he said with a laugh. “I feel like I’ve been getting a lot of breakaways lately.”

Oleksy up front: “A team guy. He plays wherever he needs to play,” Thompson said. “I thought he did a great job. He was a factor on one of the goals. I’m proud of how he worked.” Landry has worked up front a bit on some power plays as well. “Just his vision; good puck skills,” Thompson said. “If you look at his skating, he fits into what we need on the power play. We’re missing a couple of guys up front on the power play, and he fits in that role. He’s played forward before.”

Prescout. Three teams with 72 points now for the fourth, fifth and sixth records in the Eastern Conference, though obviously one of those teams (Bridgeport at the moment) gets moved up to third seed if the season were to suddenly end.

We were totally watching the wrong game: Steve MacIntyre got a match penalty for punching Springfield goalie Paul Dainton.

Jason Guarente of the Reading Eagle on Yannick Riendeau and Marc Cantin.

And onetime Sound Tiger Wes Goldie is hitting some major ECHL milestones.

Team’s off Monday. Back Tuesday with the chat unless stuff happens in the meantime.

It didn’t look like their night for a while. Chances weren’t going. Anton Khudobin was making saves. The Bruins built themselves a lead.

It wasn’t big enough. No Cizikas, no Ullstrom, no great shakes for once from the goaltending: No biggie.

Blair Riley takes a cross-check and takes offense. “He’s been great for us from the beginning,” Jeremy Colliton said. “He plays extremely hard, and he sticks up for his teammates. The past few games, we’ve seen he’s got some hands, too. He did help get us going.”

Tony Romano puts a shot toward the net that caroms over to Justin DiBenedetto for the first goal of the comeback. Tyler McNeely steals the puck and gets it to the net with Sean Backman and Trevor Frischmon. Sweet behind-the-back pass from Scott Howes to Micheal Haley. Haley gets another one, off a defenseman’s stick.

And then after Providence ties it up again, DiBenedetto battles through the guy behind the net… “I Kind of thought he was going to get it to me. I knew what I wanted to do with it,” Colliton said. “I was just praying it would come out on my side.”

It did. Colliton backhanded it in upstairs, off Michael Hutchinson and in. Bridgeport held on, a team effort all around.

….

Colliton’s 200th point kind of happened twice. He had gotten credit for an assist on DiBenedetto’s goal, but it turned out to belong to Aaron Ness. The real 200th was a little better than a second assist. “To get to 201, you’ve got to get to 200,” he said. Good to get it in a win, he said. Second place is Rob Collins’ 163, which of course was the team record for almost five years.

Calvin de Haan got himself back to work, and he said he felt fine. “I was a little hesitant. I was nervous, my first game,” de Haan said. “That’s expected.” He said he got his legs under him as the game went on and settled in. “It’s good to be back.” He started on the right side with Aaron Ness, but then he switched places with Jon Landry, going to the left side with Ty Wishart, his usual partner much of the season. “We wanted to get him back with Wishart,” Thompson said. “It helped him settle down and helped Wish settle down. Landry helped Ness settle down; I thought Ness was a little scrambly early on.”

Never asked about it, but Landry played a shift at forward on the second-unit power play in the first period. Haley played in that spot in the third period. That worked out.

Six home wins in a row ties for third in team history. But Blair Riley’s goal-scoring streak ends at two.

Not sure what happened to Anton Khudobin after the second period. He was still at the bench, which was two men short for the third, Bobby Robins (didn’t see anything happen to him, either) and Kevan Miller (who took a few punches from Riley).

Prescout. Albany’s just four points behind Bridgeport and Hartford, which lost tonight at Springfield.

Wilkes-Barre is down to Patrick Killeen in goal after Scott Munroe got hurt tonight.

And RIP, Billy Strange.

To save a bunch of commenters saying “Olson was traded to Houston,” summary of the day so far, and we’ll tack lineups on here around 6:45 with anything else in between:

–Benn Olson to the Aeros for future considerations. He’d barely played here since the new year, and with the bodies coming back, it didn’t look as if he was going to play much, either. So, probably good for both parties.

–The team let Dallas Jackson go from his PTO.

–Columbus called up Greenwich’s Cam Atkinson, so Bridgeport will miss him tonight. Or maybe Springfield will miss him. Whoever’s running the CBJ Twitter feed has been answering questions all day. Some of the responses are priceless; Some of the questions, even more.

More after a car ride.

More after the car ride: Bridgeport made official three more AHL contracts, Kael Mouillierat, Scott Howes and Jon Landry. They’ll all be eligible for the Sound Tigers’ Clear Day list on March 5.

Neither Calvin de Haan nor Mark Katic will play tonight. If you do the math on all the ins and outs and suspension and guys-who-didn’t-practice this week, you’re left with 18 skaters for Bridgeport. That’s apparently who’s in tonight. We’ll toss the lineups up after warmup. Which, if I remember that the game’s at 7:30 instead of 7, will be around 7:15.

And here they are.

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

SPRINGFIELD
F: Giroux-St. Pierre-MacLeod
Byers (C)-Joudrey (A)-Kubalik
Calvert-Garlock-Mayorov
Spencer-Mair-Bogosian
D: Amadio-Goloubef
Cullity-Ruth
Regner-Prout
G: Legace
Dainton

R: Cozzan. L: St. Lawrence, Galvin.

Springfield doesn’t put the letters on their warmup jerseys. I’ll add them if I can.

Bridgeport released Riley Gill tonight.

A doldrum-y, fluky-bounce kind of night turned into yet another Bridgeport win Saturday, and if I’ve got to try to come up with one reason, it’s the end of the Phantoms’ second power play.

Bridgeport had completed a solid penalty kill, much improved, Brent Thompson thought, from the first-period kill that degenerated at the end and left Shane Harper alone in front. The puck came out of the Bridgeport zone and got loose in the neutral zone. Tomas Marcinko took it, skated it, got it deep, and started a cycle that seemed to last about four minutes, interrupted only by the pesky technicality of Casey Cizikas’ goal.

Shots at the end of that penalty kill were 12-8 Adirondack. By the end of the second period, they were 26-19 Bridgeport.

“I think the big thing was puck decisions,” Thompson said. “The first period, one, we weren’t taking shots, and two, we weren’t protecting the puck in the offensive zone.”

They did a lot more of that, and the power play came through, with David Ullstrom’s pair of goals off one-timers, one from Matt Donovan, one (well, both, one primarily and one secondarily) from Jon Landry.

Another win.

“The battle level on our team is huge,” Ullstrom said. “It shows what kind of team we have.”

…..

Jamie noticed the streak: Anders Nilsson has won seven decisions in a row, which at least by my records ties the team mark for consecutive victories. (Ties Nathan Lawson, who started his AHL career 7-0, though the first was in relief.)

Landry has two assists in each of the past three games.

So ends the Adirondack Phantoms season series. Bridgeport wins it 4-2, in case it matters. Season series against Hershey ends Sunday. In case that matters, Bridgeport needs a regulation win to tie the series and send it to goal differential.

In the Coast: Tony Romano was on the ice for two power-play goals tonight but finished with the same line as last night, no points, five shots. A night after Alaska couldn’t score on 50 shots, the Aces bury five in the first as of this writing; Chris Langkow has an assist.

The angle from the press box made it look as if Cizikas buried that puck into the empty net. Apparently hit the post and caromed out at a funny angle.

Jon Kalinski was scratched for a reason tonight.

Prescout. Two nights in a row that Bridgeport’s next opponent faces Manchester. (Spoiler: The streak ends here.) Another spoiler: The power play’s still good without Keith Aucoin.

OK, back in like an hour and a half.

So there was David Ullstrom today at Wonderland, for now at least, skating with Casey Cizikas and Rhett Rakhshani and ready to get back out there. How long will he be with those guys? Well, with Cizikas and Rakhshani, depends on chemistry, flow, what have you. With the Sound Tigers? Sounds as if all involved are hoping for a short stay. Story tomorrow.

Brandon Gentile was in town and wearing No. 23 on his helmet. Today at least, Benn Olson was in Calvin de Haan’s old spot with Ty Wishart. Twin Towers on defense. Another defenseman is likely by tomorrow to get themselves to seven. The only forward line intact was Haley-Romano-Backman; we’ll see what they finally look like tomorrow night. (We’ll almost certainly be sitting home for it, so stop by for a liveblog.)

Edit: With an assist to Doug for finding the release from Colorado, Jon Landry is the other defenseman. He’s no relation to the Jon Landry who played here last year; that Landry isn’t playing right now, though far from forgotten. This Landry is second among ECHL defensemen in scoring.

The Sound Tigers are wearing special pink-trimmed sweaters for Saturday’s game.

Seen on Twitter: Pascal Morency speaks.

Don’t know if you guys watch “The Middle,” but I thought last night’s episode, particularly the opening scene as they honored and remembered and reacted to the death of actress Frances Bay’s character, was beautiful.

You may have seen this by now, but: Just after Jack Jablonski, Jenna Privette, a girls hockey player in Minnesota, was seriously injured in a game. Jeez. A fund has been set up for her as well.

And RIP, Bill Janklow.