Soundin' Off

The Islanders announced that, first reported by Arthur Staple, a few minutes ago.

As Bob McKenzie reminds us, it’s an important waivers day: A regular roster NHL player, if he isn’t technically on an AHL roster on Monday at 3 p.m., can’t be sent down for the rest of the year. So, if teams want the flexibility to move out a veteran at any point the rest of the year, he’s got to go on waivers today. (He reports that these guys are on waivers today. For instance, if I’m not mistaken, the absence of Dylan Reese from that list makes him an NHLer for the rest of the season.)

More but less pressingly is what that means for the Sound Tigers’ lineup tonight, which is to be seen. They played their only 12 available forwards last night. If Calvin de Haan is indeed available, they could go 11 forwards/seven defensemen.

Edit: ECHL transactions have Greenville loaning Marc-Olivier Vallerand to Bridgeport.

The Sound Tigers apparently have lost Dylan Reese for the weekend; as Arthur Staple figured a couple of days ago, he reports tonight that Reese is joining the Islanders in Anaheim.

The Sound Tigers practiced in Portland on Thursday and then went Go-Karting; check out the various Sound Tigers’ Twitter feeds for more. “Rhitt” and “Jean Girard” posted photos with the agate.

Bridgeport and Charlotte are the only two AHL teams off Friday night. The Pirates, in fact, travel while the Sound Tigers hang out in their hometown.

A Sports Illustrated poll ranked Frans Nielsen as No. 9 on a list of underrated NHL players. Fill in the punchline.

The Falcons have deals to stay in Springfield, with Columbus until at least 2014. They also have a deal with Manny Legace, a full-season AHL contract to replace his PTO, according to the AHL transactions.

Hershey and Adirondack meet Friday at Citizens Bank Park. All those questions about what the attendance was at Rentschler last year will immediately become moot when the puck drops.

Well, that was fast: Peter Mannino back up to St. John’s.

San Jose called Tommy Wingels up from Worcester. The AHL Sharks signed an interesting name to replace him: Alex Bourret, the former Hartford Wolf Pack forward (we used to jokingly call him “Pavel,” the way he scored against Bridgeport), who hasn’t been seen in the AHL since 2009. (Interesting set of transactions in which Bourret has been involved.)

The Hockey Rodent has begun the “John Tortorella, We’ve Got Your Back Fund.”

Some kind of championship game at the World Juniors: Sweden outshot Russia something like 458-2 58-17 but were still scoreless after 60 because of Andrei Makarov. (Russia actually had 12 of those shots in the third.) Senators draft pick Mika Zibanejad finally scored the winner at 10:09 of overtime to secure the first gold at this tournament since 1981 for the Swedes, who included Islanders draft pick Johan Sundstrom. Canada earned the bronze with a 4-0 win over Finland. (We’re No. 7, thanks to a 2-1 win over Switzerland on Wednesday; worst finish since 1999.)

And you’ve probably heard the story by now of Jack Jablonski, the Minnesota high school hockey player who was paralyzed after a hit from behind recently. A fund has been set up to help him and his family.

Dylan Reese got the call from the Islanders; they term it an emergency because of a day-to-day Andrew MacDonald leg injury. We’ll see whether that emergency recall becomes a regular one, or if they’ll go back to carrying six defensemen when MacDonald’s ready to go. (Other stuff could, of course, happen in the meantime.) Ty Wishart was back on the ice this morning, so Bridgeport still has seven, with Steve Oleksy back up yesterday.

(Reese is 12th in the AHL in scoring by defensemen this morning, by the way.)

The other defenseman of the header? Mark Katic*, who’s still a long way away but who skated today for the first time. Felt good to be out there, yes, he said, but two and a half months off skates made it a tough one.

Trevor Gillies didn’t practice; no change, Brent Thompson said, in that Gillies is doubtful for the weekend.

*-Clean-shaven.

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.

Arthur Staple first reported the five Islanders on waivers: Tomas Marcinko, Trevor Frischmon, Tim Wallace, Ty Wishart, Dylan Reese. That’s most of the most-likely candidates to be sent down who’d need to clear.

Sound Tigers reference in this Greg Cronin and Scott Gordon feature. Neat Kirill Kabanov story from Chris Botta.

The NY Post’s Joel Sherman this morning on the sad truth for the Mets: There is no good decision they can make on Jose Reyes‘ contract. This afternoon featured another questionable Reyes decision.

And I have yet to see “Moneyball,” but unfortunately it has already done the unthinkable: made me sympathize with Art Howe.

While we watched Shelton National and Seymour slug it out, the Islanders subtly acknowledged receipt of signed qualifying offers from Micheal Haley, Dylan Reese and Ty Wishart. That makes 42 NHL contracts, with only Josh Bailey outstanding as a restricted free agent. (In that, we treat Blake Comeau, headed for arbitration and apparently for the aisle as well, as signed, and we also count Nino Niederreiter and Kirill Kabanov, whose contracts wouldn’t count against the 50 if they were sent back to junior before playing 10 games.)

Katie Strang tweeted this morning that six Islanders Group II players have been tendered their qualifying offers, which will make them restricted free agents come Friday. Most notably for Bridgeport purposes, the gang of six included Micheal Haley, Ty Wishart, Jesse Joensuu and Dylan Reese.

From what we’ve been told, Dustin Kohn hasn’t been tendered (like Jack Hillen, up top), nor has Tomas Marcinko. Marcinko isn’t likely to get one. Kohn, haven’t heard anyone say “he won’t,” but haven’t heard anyone say “he will,” either. The deadline is Monday at 5 p.m.

Not qualifying a player doesn’t necessarily mean cutting ties permanently. That usually is what happens. But failing to qualify a player just means a team renounces that right of first refusal and makes the player an unrestricted free agent; the team and player can still agree on a contract with different terms than the team would have to tender*.

I’m not positive how it works with Robin Figren and Rob Hisey. Obviously, neither will be here next year. But since they signed elsewhere before July 1, I’m not sure the Islanders need to qualify them to keep those rights. Will check.

*-Qualifying offers have to include certain minimum figures and conditions, depending on the previous year’s contract and a player’s service time. If you want the gory details, it’s Article 10.2 (a) in the CBA.

Hadda run out tonight* after writing the daily feature, and moments after I left, the Islanders got around to announcing that Dylan Reese and Mark Katic got called up. With Dustin Kohn and Anton Klementyev out and everybody else up top, the only other defenseman in the organization with an NHL contract for this season is Calvin de Haan. If some Islanders defenseman wants to fake an injury so we can see that obscure rule in action, I’m all for it.

That leaves Bridgeport with five defensemen, assuming Brett Motherwell (banged up at some point over the weekend but not figured to be serious in any case) is good to go. Probable that they do something about a sixth by gametime.

Prescout. That’s more like Portland. First AHL goal for former future Sound Tiger Nick Tuzzolino. We’ll have a radio-liveblog here tomorrow night. (Been a while. No more high school or college games to get in the way.)

Meanwhile, Phil Ginand’s brother Ryan had a big night for Albany, his first AHL goal and two assists.

*-I don’t know about you guys, but I could watch the little airplanes fly around on FlightAware all day.
**I did come home with one awesome Kolner Haie throw pillow*** out of it.
***–My passengers were under orders that, if a Rob Collins bobblehead doll should exist and they came across one, money was no object. The Bundesliga’s merchandising is apparently a lot stronger than the DEL’s, at least where my crew was.

…where you take the little moments when you can, when even those moments come with an asterisk, when the moment you get on the positive side of the injury ledger, more come along.

But hey, let’s start with the fun, a tying goal, short-handed and extra-attacker with 22.3 seconds left, which sent Rob Hisey into celebratory hysterics.

“It was kind of a lucky goal,” he said of his backhander of a rebound of a Justin DiBenedetto shot that three or four times could have been turned anywhere other than Hisey’s path. “Those are the goals we weren’t getting this year.

“The last couple of games, the team has been battling hard,” he added. “There’s no quit in here. We’ve got to keep playing hard to the last. It’s a good atmosphere. Hopefully we keep it going this weekend and get some points.”

But then there’s Mark Katic’s boarding major, following close on the heels of Dustin Kohn keeping weight off his right knee — the opposite side from the knee that kept him out through the middle of the season. So there are four defensemen, down to three on four different occasions because of other minor penalties, splitting up the time. Ty Wishart played 35 minutes; Dylan Reese, 32. Aaron Ness played about 24.

They gave up two goals — thought Chris Terry kicked in the second one — but came back with two of their own. Yet another shootout loss, but another point.

“For the players to battle that hard, to believe that much — we’re on a little bit of a roll,” Pat Bingham said. “The guys are starting to believe again.”

….

Story is on Ness’ debut, tossed into the fire right away, but some other quotes from him: He mentioned that the game was faster, and I wondered if that was the biggest difference. “The speed — just the style, too,” he said. “It’s a possession game. There’s a lot more dumping, chipping.” Stepping on the ice for the first time? “Pretty cool,” he said, “to finally make it to that part of the goal, anyway. You always dream of getting that first game under your belt.”

And, yeah, he had to play a little bit.

“He did not look out of place in the American Hockey League, against a very fast team,” Bingham said. “He hasn’t even skated with us, just a pre-game skate.

“He didn’t hurt us one bit. He actually helped us quite a bit.”

Marcinko had the boot on the foot again. The slight saving grace: They do have extra bodies at the moment.

One of those never-seen-before things: In the shootout, Bryan Rodney went so far right to begin his attempt that he almost ran into linesman Dave Spannaus in front of the Bridgeport bench. I have no idea what would happen if such a collision disrupts a penalty-shot try. But it would have been funny.

Fifth time the Sound Tigers have gone through a season series of four or more games without a win: 2009-10 against Adirondack (0-2-0-2), 2005-06 against Portland (0-4 against one of the better AHL teams I remember recently, which lost to Mark Wotton and Hershey in the conference final), 2002-03 against Manitoba (0-4), and in the first season, 0-2-1-1 against Providence (tie-OTL at the end, so of course they’d have had a 50-50 shot of winning that game under today’s bonus-round rules).

Wes O’Neill played his first game back in Kalamazoo on Friday night.

Prescout. You realize Portland has five games in hand on Manchester? The Monarchs could take a week off and the Pirates wouldn’t catch up to them in games. (They certainly could in points, though.)

And finally: Neat picture. (caution: astronomy.) Neat story, too.

When the team finished practice today, they went back inside to discover Aaron Ness. He flew in last night, stayed on the Island, got his physical this morning and then arrived here. Stuff from him in the paper tomorrow.

(With a hat tip to a Gopher: We’ve seen the Sound Tigers rumored to move to about 7,000 places over 10 years, but Newport was never one of them.)

Tomas Marcinko skated and thinks he’s just about ready to go. Mikko Koskinen and Dylan Reese also practiced. Jeremy Colliton got the day off but should be good to go.

And thoroughly unrelated: Baseball plus calypso? Well, this is awesome.

Do you know the Red Smith column after the Shot Heard ‘Round the World, the Bobby Thomson home run that finished off the Giants’ comeback from 3,000 games behind to win the pennant? “The art of fiction is dead,” the great Smith wrote. “Reality has strangled invention.”

Chad Wiseman’s scoring four goals in nine minutes to erase a 4-1 lead for a team that had won three of 27 is, well, no real comparison, but reality might be dancing on invention’s grave.

Wiseman’s four in a period ties the league record. Incredible. Comment from a couple of people in tomorrow’s paper.

In addition to yesterday’s nine, Tomas Marcinko got today off. Rob Hisey and Dylan Reese both took short skates. Nobody else returned from among those nine, and in fact two other players, Eric Castonguay and Chris Frank, were released from their PTOs. So it certainly appears that others will be coming in on ATOs, though no names were forthcoming in the morning.

Edit: Matt Duffy’s name popped up on the AHL transactions today. The Sound Tigers say they recalled him but he did not report, so he’s suspended. Curious, but that’s all that’s forthcoming at the moment. The daily ECHL transactions had nothing on that, but they did include Steve Tarasuk being called up and Utah’s Riley Emmerson being loaned up here. No European tours for him, so this one might actually come to pass. (Tip of cap to those in the comments for noting those.) Oh, and retweeted but not apparently posted: Bridgeport released Wes O’Neill from his PTO. He returned to Kalamazoo, which promptly placed him on injured reserve.

Our paper announced today a partnership with New Haven’s Channel 8, WTNH. Move closer to your world, my friend.

The early-’90s Fordham basketball fan lurking inside me was incredibly ticked off on Rutgers’ and Mike Rice’s behalf yesterday at the Garden. Give AHL referees credit: They’ve never left the ice with two seconds left. I am left to root for Colorado to somehow play St. John’s in the NCAAs so Rice’s old teammate can exact revenge.

And this also made me laugh.

A different set of days off today, this time for Brandon Svendsen (one of those who stepped off early yesterday) and Benn Olson (whom I was worried I’d jinxed until I saw him in workout clothes from across the rink). Dylan Reese remained out, though. Pat Bingham said he’s getting that upper-body injury examined; it’s nagging.

Pretty much everybody else was back on the ice, including Wes O’Neill in a full practice for the first time in a while. There were 12 forwards — 13, excuse me, with Andy Hilbert in a white practice jersey — and six defensemen out there.

If you missed it last night, all of 111 seconds into his return from a nine-game suspension, Trevor Gillies went forearm vs. head on Cal Clutterbuck. And there go Bertino and Ferguson back into the penalty box*.

Bad news for Hartford and the Rangers: Michael Del Zotto is out a month or more with a broken finger.

Nice piece from Milwaukee TV on Andi Lambert, Lane’s wife.

And our crew will be blogging the MAAC basketball tournaments from Harbor Yard.

*-Just in case.