Soundin' Off

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.

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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.

No Haskins this morning, but Greg Mauldin and Jesse Joensuu were out there (on a line with Justin DiBenedetto), as was Dustin Kohn on defense. Do they play tomorrow? “Not sure yet,” Jack Capuano said. He sounded as if he’s considering giving them an extra day, at least some of them. The team split up into two groups for a little competition: The skaters went five-on-a-goalie, one set on each end, and the first side to score earned a point. The losing team had to skate a couple of laps at the end. Mauldin’s team lost, but he was exempted from the skating. (Joensuu did skate and looked OK.)

Have kept forgetting to mention that Jeremy Reich is in town. He still has the cast on his wrist for another week or so, but he has been skating on his own and working out.

Just spent a few minutes perusing News from 1930, which has broken format for a few days to go back 80 years instead of 79 and examine how the Wall Street Journal reported the great crash of 1929. Fascinating.

And with that, unless something crazy happens, I’ll leave you alone for a few days. Phil’s making the trip, if I recall correctly (Edit: Actually, he’s joining the team Saturday in Portland), so you’ll have a local perspective on the radio Webcast for two games, at least.

Edit: OK, I lied: back with Eric Boguniecki’s signing with Alaska.

All the dings left the Sound Tigers almost short-handed today. (Not quite. Still had more guys than they usually did in 2002.) Missing were Tyler Haskins, Jesse Joensuu (with a pretty pronounced limp, still), Dustin Kohn and Greg Mauldin, though all were in the building. Too early to know for sure about the weekend. One who was back to full strength: Micheal Haley. Matt Bertani told him he looked really good during the lap-skating that ended practice, staying strong while others started to fade. “Had a lot of practice,” Haley said.

From the comments: Heard nothing about Guenin throwing a stick, let alone hitting someone, but I’ll ask. And when you consider Lawson was in the ECHL a year ago, it’s quite an ongoing rise for him. He has certainly played well, and without the shoulder injury, he probably would have received an NHL look last year. Starter? Who knows. Lots of luck involved there. But a chance to make it? Why not?

Jason Krog got the call.

Botta presents a nice first-person piece from Pat Dapuzzo about the aftermath of his awful on-ice accident.

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.

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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.

If you win in overtime in the New NHL AHL, have you stolen one point or two?

Not much swinging most of the afternoon: Mauldin scores one goal off a turnover, and that’s about as exciting as it gets for almost 55 minutes.

“They’ve played the same number of games as we did, and they traveled, and they looked a little stronger at points of the game,” Jack Capuano said. “That’s not what I’m about. I want to be the best-conditioned team.”

They have three days of practice to talk about that. But they are 4-0, which is unprecedented around here. They have wins over a few pretty good teams. They’re all one-goal wins, three beyond regulation, but they’re still two points.

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Greg Mauldin was pretty stoked about scoring those goals. He also seemed to be giving some of his old mates the business afterward, and given the way they took it, looked like he was pretty well-liked in that room.

Coming off that 8-1 game, the Sens looked good.

Hadn’t seen why Pascal Morency was poking around the Binghamton penalty box while Gillies and Spencer fought, a treasure hunt that led to Spencer giving him a shove at the door, which could have gotten worse. Morency said he had tossed Gillies’ helmet into the box, then realized he had tossed it into the wrong box. He was trying to root that out when the combatants arrived. Never a dull moment with Pascal around.

Craig Schira, the defenseman who took Brett Westgarth’s blast off the side of his head, was walking around after the game, bloody, maybe looking a little dazed, but apparently OK.

And finally, can’t wait to get the Internet back at home. Painful. I think I could survive without cable, but the Internet is like oxygen.

The liveblog has been postponed to early next week. Sorry for the inconvenience.

News at the end of practice was that Trevor Gillies is coming in to town. Awaiting word on exactly what sort of contract He signed a one-way AHL contract and is apparently driving down right now.

Gillies is 30, which kind of surprised me. He played only 30 games last year because of a concussion, but he had a good enough camp as a tryout with Rochester that the Amerks are not happy to see him go. So there’s your heavyweight.

Greg Moore and Greg Mauldin were named alternate captains today, two experienced forwards to go along with Mark Wotton’s leadership. “They’re guys that really lead by example, on and off the ice,” Capuano said.

As for the defensemen, Klementiev is still awaiting some kind of clearance that wasn’t made clear; he’ll remain here in the meantime, albeit not on the official roster. Piskacek remains here, at least for the moment, again albeit not on the official roster.

Just about status quo here this morning, but not so much on the Island, where Rob Schremp is on his way. So competition just got a little tighter for the last couple of forward spots up there — and maybe, ultimately, down here, too. The assumption is that the last wave comes Wednesday.

Greg Mauldin didn’t skate; just precautionary, Jack Capuano said. Romano was with Martin and DiBenedetto, and Marcinko moved between Haley and Figren. The nine defensemen (minus Flood, for whom no timetable beyond “day-to-day” has been revealed) and three goalies were out there

Edit: Aucoin and Giroux cleared waivers and were sent to Hershey.

The Kings assigned Kevin Westgarth, Brett’s brother, to Manchester.

The ECAC hockey tournament moves to Atlantic City after one more year in Albany. Wow.

More tonight after the press gathering.