Soundin' Off

The crowded house gets more crowded with Bridgeport’s addition of Ferris State centerman Jordie Johnston (IHDB) to an amateur tryout. Had a nice year with the national runners-up. He was expected in town today, so probably joins them on the ice tomorrow.

To break out some stuff from the chat: Casey Cizikas and David Ullstrom began practice with the team today, then left after about 15 minutes. Trevor Frischmon and Jon Landry didn’t practice. Anders Nilsson also didn’t skate, and Brent Thompson didn’t sound optimistic about getting him back soon.

Justin DiBenedetto’s automatic suspension became official. He’ll miss Friday’s game, but so will Bobby Robins, suspended for a check to the head, presumably the Backman hit for which he was penalized. (Also a combined 13 games of suspensions to two Worcester players and Worcester assistant David Cunniff for their parts in the post-shootout melee the other night.)

Nice piece by Jamie on Steve Oleksy. Disappointing morning-into-afternoon for them and the American Sound Tigers, though, who lost 7-2 to the Canadians in softball. They’re 0-2 this year.

Jeff Jacobs reports that Tommy Cross of Simsbury will join the P-Bruins, so maybe we see his debut Friday.

Norfolk’s Mark Barberio wins the Eddie Shore Award as top defenseman.

And Jamie asked me this morning if I’d heard about Scott Gordon and Greg Cronin. Knowing that Brian Burke was heading into a press conference as I’d walked downstairs, I got very nervous. No need for that: Jamie was just talking about the official announcement that they’re running the U.S. show at Worlds again.

With Trevor Frischmon out tonight — though he has been banged up, sounds like it’s from last night — Brock Nelson makes his pro debut; he’ll move into Tomas Marcinko’s spot from last night, while Marcinko moves up into his. We’ll see what that does to the PK units.

Steve Oleksy gets an ‘A’ on his sweater in Frischmon’s absence. Nice show for a kid who was up and down once this year.

Bridgeport has one to scratch, and all indications were that it’ll be McNeely. Noticed after the fact that Providence had an extra out there; I think it’s Glendening, but I’ll correct if necessary. Edit: McNeely and Glendening, indeed.

BRIDGEPORT
F: Persson-Romano-Rakhshani
Howes-Nelson-Riley
Halmo-Marcinko-Backman
Ullstrom-Mouillierat-DiBenedetto (A)
(McNeely-scratched)
D: de Haan-Wishart (A)
Ness-Landry
Katic-Oleksy (A)
G: Poulin
Reiter

PROVIDENCE
F: Florek-Hennessy (A)-Arniel
Sauve-Camper-Cunningham
MacDermid-Whitfield (C)-Robins
MacKinnon-Spooner-MacDonald
(Glendening-scratch)
D: Bodnarchuk-Miller
Warsofsky-McIver (A)
Button-Trotman
G: Hutchinson
Morrison

R: C.Brown. L: Simeon, Colby.

“Give Worcester credit,” Brent Thompson said. “They threw everything at us.”

“The first period, there’s no excuse,” Justin DiBenedetto said. They didn’t get a lot of bounces, he said, but “we were sloppy.”

And then this happened.

I mean, if you turned this game off in disgust at 4-1, you’ve got to be excused. This was shaping up into their second clunker against Worcester in the past couple of weeks, a messy first period turned into, well, whatever it was going to turn into in the second and third.

Blair Riley got them one back, but then the Sharks capitalized again, with John McCarthy driving to the net and driven into Kevin Poulin. (And they did get some bounces to build that lead. The second goal, Kennedy’s power-play goal, was a de Haan attempt to clear the puck to the corner that bounced off Frischmon’s skate, right into the net. The third one, early in the second, they were denied a couple of times before McCarthy came in and got it.)

But then Steve Oleksy, diving for the puck, sets up Scott Howes. The power play comes through — “it continues to get better,” Thompson said — for DiBenedetto’s first of two. Kael Mouillierat scores a pretty one on his own rebound. They get another power-play goal in the third, with help from that awful delay-of-game, puck-over-glass rule. And they’re back in first place.

Figure this game out.

….

Nothing made itself apparent tonight as far as transactions, though the Islanders announced that Evgeni Nabokov left tonight’s win in Pittsburgh with a lower-body injury. Arthur Staple noted at one point that David Ullstrom wasn’t on the bench, and indeed Ullstrom apparently didn’t play in the third period after scoring a goal in the second, but I didn’t see anything further on that.

I wasn’t entirely clear on the whole sequence of events on that early-third disallowed goal, but the fact is that the replay system isn’t supposed to be used to review a kick. So there’s that.

Oleksy played another solid game up front, moving back on the penalty kill (“our defense penalty-killed very well,” Thompson said). Almost got that disallowed goal. “He’s a leader,” Thompson said.

The lines were all over the place. Everywhere. “I had to change the chemistry,” Thompson said. ” I was juggling like I’ve never juggled before, to generate some kind of chemistry, some kind of energy.” The defense pairs settled into de Haan-Wishart as usual, but Donovan-Landry and Ness-Sinkewich.

DiBenedetto scored his 20th goal in just his 48th game. He had 19 last year.

Romano becomes the seventh player to score four assists. (Colliton did it twice.)

Islanders prospect defenseman Brenden Kichton is out for the year after surgery on a broken jaw, the Spokesman-Review reports.

Yannick Riendeau was named ECHL Player of the Week.

ECHL transactions say Brandon Gentile was returned to Alaska, though Charlotte didn’t have its half of that transaction on the official books before tonight’s game.

And finally, have you waited patiently for three years to see Mikko Koskinen take a couple of swings at a guy and get a right hand to the chops for his troubles? Thanks to Lighthouse Hockey, wait no more.

Steve Oleksy confirmed something I thought I’d seen on Sunday.

Yeah, he was having some fun playing forward.

“I love forward,” Oleksy said. “Every year so far I got to play a few games up there. My first year, I played half a year there. I like it. I feel pretty comfortable, and it’s nice that Coach has that confidence.”

Getting in on the forecheck, making open-ice hits, pestering the puck-carrier: He did a little of all of them and looked like he was having a blast.

“Obviously from a (defenseman’s) standpoint, I know how much it bothers me to get hit every time I touch the puck,” he said. “Playing forward, I try to finish every check, let the guy know I’m out there.”

A full-bore special-teams practice today. Beforehand, Scott Howes and Kael Mouillierat skated; Brent Thompson said they’d see how those guys were feeling before they made any decisions about personnel. He didn’t sound optimistic about Jeremy Colliton’s chances of playing this weekend. Again, without them, that’s 11 forwards, unless they move a forward defenseman up again. If you were thinking of help from up the road: From our old friend Chip Malafronte, Yale’s Brian O’Neill signs with the Kings and joins the Monarchs on an ATO.

Steve MacIntyre got four games yesterday. The Pens play Norfolk tonight. Different refs. (VERY different refs, actually.)

If you weren’t up at 1:59 a.m., I don’t want to hear how excited you are about Pi Day.

And RIP, Dick Harter.

*-For the past several years, that phrase has always come out in a Strong Bad voice because of this. Burninate at your leisure.

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.

Afternoon edit: The Islanders sent Aaron Ness down this afternoon. Edit2: Cizikas up (possible NHL debut to come), Poulin down as well. Edit3: Kael Mouillierat’s agent says he’s agreed to terms.

Tim Wallace had just gone onto the ice at Webster Bank Arena for a skate after the Sound Tigers’ practice when Brent Thompson, phone to his ear, bolted out from his office to the rink.

The Tampa Bay Lightning had claimed Wallace off waivers before the noon deadline, sending him to the Gulf Coast instead of Bridgeport.

“It’s nice, obviously, a good thing that another team likes you,” Wallace said. “It’s been a whirlwind of a couple of days. I’m just going to take it one game at a time from now on.”

Wallace (this was about 12:45) was just leaving the arena and had talked to his agent but not anyone from the Lightning yet. He has a familiar face waiting for him: Nate Thompson, a good friend from back home in Alaska.

(We’d say “former Islander Nate Thompson,” but it’s Tampa; they’re all former Islanders.)

Unless I’m forgetting or misinterpreting something, the timing seems to pretty much eliminate him from coming back here. He’d have to be in the minors Monday at 3 to be sent down this year, and to do that, he’d have to be placed on waivers by Saturday and claimed by the Islanders and only the Islanders. So, good for Wallace.

(Without Klementyev, including Koskinen, not including the two in junior, and now without Wallace: 43 NHL contracts? I should recount those at some point.)

And so, Bridgeport is stuck with the cast that has won 16 of the past 18. For now. It’s logical, as Arthur Staple tweeted Wednesday, that a call-up could be coming; there didn’t seem to be a tip here about who might be going. The forward lines looked a smidgen odd, actually, until someone pointed out that Tomas Marcinko, skating with Justin DiBenedetto and Casey Cizikas, was probably a placeholder for No. 36. Well, neither Marcinko (three-game suspension announced Wednesday afternoon, if you missed it) nor Wallace will be available Friday in Springfield.

With Ty Wishart back, Bridgeport released Wes Cunningham from his PTO. Brent Thompson said he thought Calvin de Haan could play this weekend, and — “big maybe” — Mark Katic was also possible. They don’t plan to rush Rhett Rakhshani back; he seems to be doing well.

The team announced Blair Riley’s and Steve Oleksy’s AHL contracts.

Afternoon edit: Tomas Marcinko receives a three-game suspension from the league for Monday’s boarding penalty. Of note, both of the other guys who were suspended will miss a Bridgeport game: Cody Bass for a hit against Hartford, and Nathan Perkovich for his hit on Mark Parrish.

–Benn Olson is going to the ECHL again to play some more games. He’ll serve the last game of his ECHL suspension tonight, then play four games in five days for Greenville, expected to return here a week from today.

–The Islanders announced they’ve placed Tim Wallace on waivers, and they sent Ty Wishart to Bridgeport. (Not here this morning.)

–Calvin de Haan, Mark Katic and Brett Gallant continue to practice. Brent Thompson wouldn’t say yes or no on any of them yet, but they’re in the conversation again, at least, for lineup spots, depending on what the doctors and the management say in the next few days.

–Thompson said he doesn’t expect Rhett Rakhshani to play this weekend, but he said Rakhshani rode the bike today and was feeling OK.

–Blair Riley’s agent spilled the beans Tuesday night: Riley has signed an AHL deal, and we’re told today that Steve Oleksy joins him. It’s likely that others follow in short order.

Lines today were basically Monday’s, with the exception of Trevor Gillies in the spot normally held by Tomas Marcinko. Given the facts above, nothing else unexpected.

Meanwhile, Columbus, banged up in goal up and down the organization, gets Curtis McElhinney as part of a trade for Antoine Vermette. You can’t make this up: McElhinney’s out injured.

This, from this week’s Saturday Night Live, gets me every time.

A darn good class for the Songwriters Hall of Fame.

And happy 32nd anniversary.

Gerry Cantlon suggested I use that as a euphemism in the gamer for something one of the players said tonight. I don’t know. Might’ve spoiled the mood of this one.

It looked unfamiliar, for a Bridgeport team to play a just-good-enough first, an invisible second, and then finally look right in the last seven or eight minutes.

“It’s another learning experience,” Brent Thompson said, a little calmer by then than he was in his first few words (which could have made for another one of those sum-it-up-in-one-quote, “that was easy” kind of posts). “This league… you can’t take a shift off. You can’t take a period off. We were casual in the first two periods.”

They had no shots of note for a long stretch, let Manchester take charge, weren’t getting pucks deep nor retrieving them. That continued on the power play, which didn’t help (though David Ullstrom pointed to some bad ice, which surely didn’t help, either).

“You have to work to protect the puck, and you have to work to retrieve the puck,” Thompson said. They didn’t do enough of either.

“It was definitely one of those nights,” Cizikas said. “I don’t know how to explain what we did tonight. I’m speechless right now, so you know it’s one of those nights. When we come here next Saturday, we’re going to be champing at the bit.”

Cizikas and Ullstrom sat at the bench for a good 30 seconds after everybody else was gone.

“The streak has been because we’ve been outworking all the teams,” Ullstrom said. “Today, we got outworked.”

Said Thompson, “Over the course of 70-something games, you hope that doesn’t happen again.”

…..

Replay scoreboard: First use, 14:23 first. Justin DiBenedetto second-effort stuff attempt at right post. He thought it went in. Martin Jones thought he had it covered. No red light. Jean Hebert said no goal, then went to the scorer’s table to check it out. After about a minute, he came out of the box with a washout signal.

Thompson said McNeely was a healthy scratch and that Backman could’ve played, too. Seeing what Manchester was dressing, they wanted Gillies in the lineup. Gillies didn’t play a lot; five or six shifts, including one that turned into a quick fight against Justin Johnson.

No obvious sign that anyone’s going up on defense after Travis Hamonic took a puck in the face tonight. Birthday boy Steve Oleksy is said to have re-upped on a new PTO.

From Jonathan Bombulie, Islanders draft pick and Bridgeport ATO Brian Day retired from hockey to go back to the real world.

Team’s off tomorrow. More Monday.

The stars seemed aligned. Islanders stuck at six defensemen for a while. Sound Tigers call a guy up. (Welcome back, Steve Oleksy.) And there’s a defenseman missing from practice. Well, obviously, that all has to mean that…

Nope. Ty Wishart’s sick. (Guess there’s something going around the team.) They gave him the morning off, partly in hopes of not spreading it further. Otherwise, same as yesterday on the ice.

The broken scoreboard has been patched up. Neatly, it bore one word today, in huge letters: “OUCH !!”

Couple of notes for the weekend, if you didn’t see them in the paper: Sunday is the annual Teddy Bear Toss, so warm up your tossing arms. And Saturday and Sunday, the Sound Tigers wives and girlfriends will be selling the Love for Lokomotiv bracelets you may have heard about. $10.

Steve Oleksy indeed joined the team on a pro tryout. He’s apparently insurance for Benn Olson, who like Chris Langkow was out today. “We’ve got a couple of guys banged up, upper-body,” Brent Thompson said; he wasn’t sure if they might be out for the weekend. That left 12 forwards and seven defensemen to go with the three goalies.

They got skated hard at the end of practice. Welcome home, fellas.

Reminder that the chat will be Wednesday instead of today, still at 1:30. Off to work on said story right now.

Edit: They had the defenseman this morning, and it looks like they’ll have the forward tomorrow: Afternoon’s ECHL transactions have Alaska loaning Dan Kissel to Bridgeport. Second-year pro has yet to make his AHL debut.