Soundin' Off

Via Elite Prospects, Mike Radja is off to Augsburger Panther.

(BTW, as the signed/non-signed lists make it toward the bottom of the page, a note that they’re linked near the bottom of the right-hand column in the “Summer 2010″ section.)

Sure, Tyler Ennis was elsewhere, and a few guys were out for Portland, too. Still, that’s the one-point-outta-first Portland Pirates they ran and gunned with, and not the early-season version they knocked around a bit, either.

Call it sloppy; Kevin Dineen did. Fact is, Bridgeport needs points desperately. They’ve had to battle for them every which way. If you were going to pick a game this weekend to write off, it’s probably this one.

And they pulled it out with a couple of good plays.

“The effort’s there. Is the outcome going to be there every game? I don’t know,” said Jack Capuano, who went back to the night in Hershey when they were outshooting the Bears before they lost Wotton and then Flood. “Hopefully this is something we can build on, get a little bit of confidence.”

—-

Second-to-last shift of the game, and there’s DiBenedetto-Marcinko-Figren, still forechecking. That was the focus, and it paid off in a goal, not to mention that choice late assignment. “We want to stay in the lineup. That’s what we’ve got to do,” Figren said. “That’s where we want to be, out there. It’s not fun to just sit around. You want to help the team win.”

The defense? “Jon Gleed could have been first star,” Capuano said, pointing especially to a blocked shot on the Pirates’ third-period power play. He pretty well ran through the litany of young defensemen, talking about the work they did. Not an easy team to play against.

Flood isn’t ready but is improving. DiBenedetto, who snapped his scoring drought, was cut in the leg in the first period but returned for the second.

Prescout. Good for the next two games, really. Most helpful to the Sound Tigers — presumably, anyway. Would be hard to catch Manchester under the best of circumstances. With the Penguins’ loss, it’s back to a three-way tie, with the Sound Tigers trailing in wins and games in hand. Only Hartford has the points and games in hand to draw even in points.

I’d do up an EastWatch, but right now there’d be nine columns, realistically, when you consider that the teams in the jumble are only eight points behind East-second-place Albany. We’ll give it another week. (Plus, separate pages on the new blog are horrible. I’ve tried. Ugly. Will probably host it off-site.)

From Phil Mushnick’s column today, check out the second-to-last bit on this second page, headed “Way to stick with it.”

Good news, everyone!

And finally… Classic.

Hey, they held ‘em to six.

Hershey made its own breaks in this one. They scored two straight off the kinds of bounces you pray for. They scored another off the mask. But they got those shots through (Giroux’s first, which hit three Sound Tigers on the way to Scott Munroe); they put those pucks to the front (Pinizzotto’s, from behind the goal line, which hit both defensemen); they put those shots on net (Giroux’s second, which Bourque had first rung off Munroe’s mask).

If those don’t happen, then those three goals in 1:01 are slightly less devastating. Hey, if those don’t happen, maybe the others don’t happen, either.

Nah, who’re we kidding? It’s Hershey.

But it just points out how you’ve got to take advantage when you can. The Bears do it. The Sound Tigers? Sometimes. When you’re playing a team that’s not 47-12-2, maybe you get away with that.

—–

Back to points-.500. Wilkes-Barre has the tiebreaker and three games in hand. Providence has games in hand. So does Adirondack. The only bright side for Bridgeport is that the NHL portion of the schedule over. Not that suddenly-first-place Portland is going to be any kind of easy Friday.

Having been at the Islanders’ summer camp helped Mike Radja a little when he came here; he knew some people aside from once and current linemate Trevor Smith. “It’s kind of sad to be traded, but it’s nice to get a fresh start.”

Dylan Reese had a goal and an assist. The only other Bridgeport defenseman that I can come up with who had more than one point in his Bridgeport debut is Bruno Gervais.

The Twitter-promised Jake Gannon story: They were playing two-touch as usual before the game, with the soccer ball. You may have heard of it; each player gets two touches to keep it in play; players are eliminated one by one until you’re left with a winner. (Cynics, insert lines about sprained ankles and ruptured Achilles.) So Gannon and Martin were eliminated from this one game, and Gannon was talking about how he had only one career win in two-touch. Had no luck. The very next game, guess who won? Yup, Gannon. His celebration was fairly muted for that, though his teammates gave him a hand. Muted, too, was the celebration of his first AHL goal, which unfortunately for him came with 3.0 seconds left in a 6-3 game. But how’s that for a combination?

James Sixsmith is the ECHL player of the week.

Portland’s Travis Turnbull and Matt Generous were suspended for a fight at the end of Sunday’s game against Albany. They’ll miss the game here Friday.

OK, trade deadline tomorrow. Rest up.

We’ll be here at 1:30 for the weekly typefest. Edit: Centerman Mike Radja is the missing piece to yesterday’s trade, sent from Syracuse to Bridgeport. He and Reese are expected to play tonight.

Edit2: Noted within, the Andy Sutton trade to Ottawa for a second-rounder, and Dustin Kohn’s presumed call-up. Noted now: NHL.com’s Mike Morreale reported Brett Westgarth’s trade to San Jose for future considerations. No word yet what those considerations might entail.