Soundin' Off

First bit of Islanders news today is that Rob Schremp won’t be coming here at any point. Atlanta claimed him off waivers. Nathan Lawson cleared, so he’s eligible to be sent down.

Here at a quarter after 12, the Islanders are left with 11 unsuspended forwards (Trevor Gillies serves the final game of his suspension tomorrow and is eligible to return Wednesday). But there are a few hours left to do something about that.

12:45 — Not from the NHL, not from the AHL… but in the CHL, Mike Mole signed with Odessa.

2:00 — Reports are that former Sound Tigers defenseman Chris Campoli is off to Chicago for a pick and a minor leaguer. So at least Binghamton gets some help this time. Edit: Ryan Potulny, TSN reports, which isn’t a bad pickup at all.

2:30 — Colten Teubert, among Brett Gallant’s combatants Saturday night, is reportedly off from the Kings to Edmonton in a package for Dustin Penner, TSN reports. Meanwhile, BST radio color man Carmine Vetrano was named the Federal League’s broadcaster of the year.

2:45 — Upstate, the Whale have Kris Newbury, Mats Zuccarello and Ryan McDonagh listed as down in the transactions. So they’ll be eligible for Hartford’s Clear Day list.

3:00 — As the deadline passes, TSN reports that the Rangers have picked up former attorney general former Mets pitcher Toronto’s John Mitchell. Katie Strang tweets that the Isles did nothing. (And just now at about 3:05, Isles confirm.) Awaiting word who may have been sent down, on paper or otherwise.

3:15 — Greg Moore on the move again, this time to Columbus for Tom Sestito, says Bob McKenzie (though his first tweet mentioned the Rangers instead of Philly). Michael Chaput also presumably goes from Adirondack to Springfield with Moore. edit: err, he would if he were there. Thinking of the other Chaput, the one who went to Providence yesterday, I guess. This Chaput is still in junior.

3:17 — Isles announced that Justin DiBenedetto has been called up. He can stand in front of NHL nets.

4:01 — While we continue to wait… SwedishIslander on Twitter passes on a link to a story from Sweden that several Swedish teams have interest in Robin Figren. No surprise they might have interest. We’ll see if it’s mutual.

4:04 — Appearing on leaguestat are Nathan Lawson and Ty Wishart as players sent down and called back up.

5:15 — Have been checking on some other things, but in the meantime, the Rangers announced that Marty Biron is out indefinitely with a broken collarbone he suffered in practice. Yikes. Cam Talbot is up from Hartford.

7:30 — The obvious missing names on the transactions are Haley and Katic, but apparently emergency-recall players don’t have to be in the AHL at 3 on the deadline to be eligible to be sent down.

The Islanders just announced they’ve placed Nathan Lawson and Rob Schremp on waivers.

This doesn’t necessarily mean anything immediately. But work backwards: Monday is the trade deadline. Any player in the NHL at 3 p.m. on Monday can’t be sent down. So if the Islanders would want to send either of those guys down at any point beyond Monday, they need them to clear waivers by Monday and send them to the AHL, at least on paper, at 3 p.m. Anyone on waivers after today wouldn’t clear until after the deadline.

Edit just to note that I’ve tried to clarify a few things up top. And I hope that actually worked. Also added the below.

So who is technically eligible to be sent down Monday, now? Micheal Haley, Matt Martin, Ty Wishart, I think Al Montoya (don’t think he has enough NHL time yet to need waivers, though he will at some point), Travis Hamonic, Mark Katic*, Lawson and Schremp if they clear, and… John Tavares. (Yeah. Right.)

Meanwhile, blast from the past division: AHL transactions say that Manitoba signed Mike Mole to a PTO. Interesting, if true: IHDB and Elite Prospects don’t have him playing this year.

*-For crying out loud. Thought I had Katic in there. Sorry. Thanks for catching.

So there was this fan up in the upper deck, right over us in the press box. Moments after Alec Martinez’s shot from the right-circle faceoff dot made it past Dwight King’s screen and eluded Kevin Poulin, he started bellowing… something. It took me a few tries to figure it out. It sounded like “heavy.” But he wasn’t shouting it at me, so…

“Keeeeeeeeeeeeeeh-veeeeeeeeeeeee…”

Oh. “Kevy.” OK.

This went on for a few minutes, in 10-second-or-so bursts at a time. It did the Sideshow Bob Rake Scene thing, where at first you wondered what was going on, then it was funny, then it got annoying, and then it got giddily funny again.

But by that time he was getting a little more creative. “Kevy! You had a two-goal lead, Kevy! This is on your shoulders, Kevy! You had a gift, Kevy, and you blew it!”

(Some of the facts of those statements may be in dispute, but this is heckling, and facts should never get in the way of good psychology. Moving on.)

“Kevy! You’re gonna choke it away in overtime, Kevy, I know it!”

There was one problem with his foresight.

The puck never got to Kevy in overtime.

It only got to Kevin Poulin once more after that perfectly screened shot, in fact. And before that, Rob Schremp and Rob Hisey and Dustin Kohn and Travis Hamonic had teamed up to put on one more show with the puck, in the Manchester zone.

(“I was on the receiving end,” game-winner Hamonic said. “Those guys made great plays.” Hisey and Schremp with open ice should have been illegal. But we digress.)

Poulin had to make big saves from Moment 1 through the end of the third. First shift: Kolomatis’ point shot knuckles toward the net, hits Dustin Kohn… “The puck was coming a little like this,” Poulin said, wobbling his hand. “It hit Kohner’s stick, my shoulder — it started like that, and it kept going.”

There were turnovers, and there were defensemen caught a little flat-footed, but when that happened, Poulin made saves in his first game in two weeks.

“We have three goalies,” Poulin said. “One game you’re in the stands, one game you back up, one game you play: It’s the first time I’ve experienced that in my career. You have to deal with it. When you play, you play your best.”

That, he did. And while both teams had chances, Manchester’s seemed to be the kind that could have been devastating, odd-man rushes that could have tied the game, and in the second period, who knows where it goes from there? But Poulin stopped them.

Meanwhile, Bridgeport was generating chances, too. Jeff Zatkoff made some saves, definitely looked better than last week, though the best save of the night was centerman John Zeiler’s on Rhett Rakhshani’s open-net wraparound. They played a hard-nosed road game.

“With our heart, and determination … I told them, I didn’t worry about the outcome of that game,” Capuano said. “If we can play like that and establish our identity, we’re gonna win, for sure.”

They did. This sure doesn’t look like the kind of year where it’s going to be easy. But they did.

….

The things Schremp was doing with the puck were ridiculous. He said he felt no ill effects at all, got the game-timing back quickly and is flying back to New York in the morning.

“I felt great,” he said. “It was a good stint. It was exactly what I was looking for. (That was) just conditioning. I haven’t played a game in four weeks.”

The DiBenedetto-Ullstrom-Joensuu line scored one goal and could have had a few more. In the third, right after a Bridgeport power play, they went in order: DiBenedetto hit a post, Ullstrom shot wide from in tight, Zatkoff made a pad save on Joensuu.

Matt Martin scored his first in the NHL. The Isles lost, though.

Patrick Maroon is “no longer with the (Phantoms) pending reassignment.” Hmm. Wilkes-Barre stayed perfect against Maroon-less Adirondack.

Prescout. Though the teams play again tomorrow in Springy. (If you’ve somehow missed it, Bridgeport is off tomorrow. Game postponed. Politics. No, actual politics.)

Earl Pomerantz on the pound sterling, pre-decimalization. Confounding. But still, it led to one of my favorite lines from my favorite movie. “That was fresh this morning. Two and nine.”

The team is, really, off tomorrow. Late practice Sunday.

*-Mark Wotton

As he tweeted — and it stayed up this time — Rob Schremp is in ManchVegas. He’ll play the middle, with Rob Hisey shifted over to the wing for the evening.

Things otherwise look familiar on both sides (with the addition on the ManchVegas side of newly minted captain Marc-Andre Cliche). Kevin Poulin starts in goal, on rotation.

BRIDGEPORT
F: Hisey-Schremp-Rakhshani
DiBenedetto-Ullstrom-Joensuu (A)
Haley-Marcinko-Figren
Bourbeau-Colliton-Yablonski
D: Kohn-Hamonic
Katic-Reese (A)
Wotton (C)-Klementyev
G: Poulin
Lawson

MANCHESTER
F: King-Azevedo-Holloway
Nolan-Elkins-Kozun
Clune-Zeiler-Meckler
Harnden-Cliche (C)-Johnson
D: Martinez (A)-Kolomatis
Campbell-Mullen
Hickey (A)-Voynov
Hill-scratch
G:
Jones

R: Binda. L: Ross, MacDonald.

Bridgeport is back in blue tonight.

Edit: Been a while since we’ve mentioned it. Heck, didn’t at the beginning of the year, either. But if you’re new, we do a little in-game tweeting @fornabaioctp. Trying hard to avoid Tweet-Every-Penalty Syndrome, at least until the playoff run.

Game in manchester tomorrow

That was the tweet from noted hockey reporter RobSchremp at 7:14. The tweet has since been deleted. The Islanders aren’t confirming anything. But I’ll guess we should expect a conditioning stint by tomorrow morning.

And apologies for not figuring out how to revert that graphic smily to text.