Soundin' Off

Brandon Svendsen back to Kalamazoo, and Darryl Bootland will rejoin his brother there as well.

The Portland Pirates are set to stay put, Chris Roy reports, pending… a… bond… referendum. Portland also announced John Slaney, all-time AHL defenseman, as an assistant coach. (Phoenix also signed Patrick O’Sullivan this week.)

And RIP, Bubba Smith.

While the kids keep parading in — the latest, ATO No. 11, is Alex O’Neil, who was with the Islanders in rookie camp — one guy who did a little bit of everything for this team is going the other way. The team released Brandon Svendsen last night.

“He was one of the cornerstones of our team this season, even though it wasn’t a playoff-caliber season,” Pat Bingham said. “We had some thrills, some highs, some lows. He was a steadying influence for our team. He played injured. He was really a team guy. I hate to see him go. If he goes to Kalamazoo, I’m sure he’ll bring a lot to the table.”

Svendsen, though he was on a PTO (three of them, technically) throughout, has played more AHL games this year than all but six Sound Tigers. The K-Wings’ regular season ends Saturday, and the playoffs follow. But if an AHL team can use a PTO guy, they could do a lot worse.

Bingham said he’s not expecting Brett Gallant back next week. I’m still not positive what’s afflicting him. So the only PTO player left playing is Benn Olson.

Donovan has been assigned No. 46. That leaves 48 as the only number under 53 yet unworn by a Sound Tiger. O’Neil got No. 42.

There’s buzz from New Hampshire about Blake Kessel‘s possibly turning pro. That’d be a lot of rookie defensemen all at once, but we’ll keep our ears open.

Chris Frank was one of two winners of the ECHL’s first Community Service Award.

And Hulu’s April Fool’s page is, as Laurie noted on Twitter, just note-perfect.

More from Springfield.

Jesse Joensuu punished himself on the bike after the game, went in, showered, dressed, and walked past Pat Bingham as the coach talked to the assembled reporter.

“Sorry, coach.”

Bingham almost laughed. “For what?”

They played a game of attrition this weekend, losing Jean Bourbeau and Benn Olson yesterday, then three more today, and thankfully it sounds as if it could’ve been worse for Brandon Svendsen.

Around that scary moment, Rob Hisey took a check to the head — first use of Rule 48 we’ve seen — late in the second after David Ullstrom suffered an injury in the first. They were down to nine forwards for the third, and on occasion eight with players in the box. They started with five defensemen, and the occasional penalty dropped them to four.

The parade of penalties led to 17 or 18 power plays and — maybe I’ve seen it before, but can’t remember it — three major-game misconduct combinations.

You always hope against hope to see something new when you come to a game. Spearing majors have become rare enough that it’s always funny to see them (as long as guys aren’t getting hurt, at least). You had Jordan Smotherman getting called for, well, something; it was announced as “illegal equipment,” and someone down the press box said he’d played with the goalie’s stick, but now it’s listed as “throwing the stick.” (Which, come to think of it, maybe he threw Khudobin a stick? I’m totally speculating. It was in the Providence zone, so if he threw a stick at the puck, it’d be a penalty shot.) Either way, there, you’re going back to the first year, when The Other Jason Goulet of Milwaukee got a penalty for playing with two sticks as he tried to bring a stick to his goalie.

But it’s sickening to see the backboard come out, especially as quickly as it was called for. We’ve been through this with Pascal Morency (precaution, thankfully), with Blaine Down, indirectly with Kevin Colley (sadly not just precaution). Here’s hoping it is more like Morency.

….

Louis Liotti went right back to Reading. “It was a one-game deal,” Bingham said. “We appreciate him coming in. He played hard. He got thrown into the fire pretty good.” They’re taking tomorrow off, and I guess they’ll see where they are Tuesday.

Joel Martin, with (no) help from those two decisions in relief, now has a couple of unfortunate team records, losses in nine decisions in a row, 10 appearances without a win (tied with Koskinen).

Jonathan makes a good point about the Tangradi/Johnson situation.

Prescout. Tough come-from-ahead loss. (Denis Hamel with 20 goals. Nah, he can’t help anybody.)

We’ll update on Svendsen tomorrow if available; otherwise, practice Tuesday, and we’ll chat at 1:30.

Bridgeport’s Brandon Svendsen was taken off on a backboard and a stretcher after receiving a hit from Kirk MacDonald early in the second period today.

To the right of Joel Martin as Bridgeport moved up-ice, MacDonald hit Svendsen at the right half-boards. Svendsen went down on his stomach. Play continued for about 10 seconds as Bridgeport moved into the offensive zone before the whistle blew. Providence’s trainer called medical staff onto the ice immediately. (Bridgeport trainer Mike Schroeder was in the dressing room tending to David Ullstrom, who was injured in the first period. He arrived on the scene quickly.)

By the time Svendsen was taken off the ice several minutes later, the entire Bridgeport team was around him.

MacDonald was assessed a boarding major and a game misconduct at 38 seconds of the second. Bridgeport didn’t score and still trails 3-0.

We’ll have more when available.

Edit, 7:45 — The postgame update added little, except that Svendsen was said to be alert and conscious through the whole thing. He has been taken to a hospital for evaluation.

8:30 — In what certainly sounds like good news, Svendsen was released from the hospital and is going home with the team. He’ll be re-evaluated tomorrow. No further details. (Ahem, upper-body, day-to-day. Feels good to joke about that.)

The latest PTO (and the latest PTO from Reading) is Louis Liotti, Long Island native and former Greg Cronin player at Northeastern. Benn Olson is out. Mark Katic was sent down after Milan Jurcina was pronounced good to go, but he won’t make it here in time. So should be five defensemen again.

Edit: In fact, it is, and it appears Jean Bourbeau, who missed some time last night, is also out, so Bridgeport goes with 17 for the second time. Providence has one to scratch, and I’ll check if they have another lettered man when they put their real sweaters on and ditch these warmup jerseys.

BRIDGEPORT
F: Castonguay-Ullstrom-Colliton (A)
Rakhshani-Hisey-Joensuu
Svendsen-Romano-Figren
Gallant-Marcinko-Taylor
D: Motherwell-Wotton (C)
Kohn (A)-Frank
Liotti
G: Martin
Koskinen

PROVIDENCE
F: Smotherman-Whitfield (A)-MacDonald
Sauve-Hamill-Caron
Reich (C)-Arniel-Laliberte
MacDermid-Chaput-Ling
(Roussel-scratch)
D: Bodnarchuk-Cohen
Valabik-Alexandrov
Donald-Goulet
G: Khudobin
Hutchinson

R: Sullivan, Krebsbach. L: C.Millea, J.Millea.

Two referees today. And two guys we’d never heard of a couple of weeks ago. You remember Joe Sullivan from last week’s Manchester home game. Nick Krebsbach is a former college player and ECHL referee.

And Brandon Svendsen signed a third and final pro tryout.

Not in Portland tonight, so we’ll liveblog from the living room again. Tossing the post up a little early because there’s a bit of afternoon news.

Bridgeport let Jon Landry go from his PTO, apparently so he could sign an AHL deal with Worcester. (Worcester hasn’t sent out an official announcement of this, but the transaction has been in the system since about 1 p.m., before Bridgeport had announced his release.) Unclear at this writing what it means for tonight’s lineup. O’Neill had said he was a no-go for the trip. Reese was likely to go, but it wasn’t clear that he was ready to jump back in. There was no move on the ECHL transactions. (Then again, Chris Roy just tweeted that the Pirates might be short-handed tonight, so maybe we party like it’s 2007 and go with 17 for both teams.)

Elsewhere: Rookie Taylor Hall is done for the year with a high ankle sprain, so Edmonton called up Alex Giroux. OKC signed Bryan Helmer to a contract through next season.

I think Phil was headed up there, so that’s the feed off which we’ll work. Back for more around 6:30, or updates in the meantime as warranted.

–Scheduled referee, working a Bridgeport game for the first time, is Chicago-area-native Jarrod Ragusin.

–Tonight is (assuming he wasn’t quietly released so he could sign with Worcester) the final game of Brandon Svendsen’s second pro tryout. For as much physical punishment as he has taken, for as many practice days he has needed to take off, for as many times as he has been banged up repeatedly, tonight will be his 50th game: He hasn’t missed one yet. Not bad at all.

–Jamie tweets that it looks as if Bridgeport will dress 13 and five, though he disclaimed that he’ll confirm in warmup. That would imply Colliton plays. Here are yesterday’s lines (minus Landry and O’Neill), with letter-guesses and a note that Colliton was in green with the rest of the Ullstrom line:

BRIDGEPORT
F: Rakhshani-Hisey-Joensuu
Bourbeau-Romano-Figren
Taylor-Marcinko-Gallant
Svendsen-Ullstrom-Castonguay-Colliton (A)
D: Motherwell-Wotton (C)
Olson-Frank
Kohn (A)
G: Koskinen
Martin

–Koskinen vs. Leggio (Enroth is up).

–Chris Roy tweets that Portland’s Mark Mancari has been called up.

–Jamie’s tweet has Colliton on left wing and Svendsen with Marcinko and Taylor on the rushes, with Gallant as the extra.

–Game on.

–Paul Byron gives the Pirates a lead on a power play off Gragnani’s set-up. Mark Parrish gets the second assist at 7:43.

–It’s still 1-0 after one. The Sound Tigers killed another penalty. Jean Bourbeau stepped off a half-minute early with Mike Schroeder off to join him.

–As Period 2 begins, Jamie notes that neither Bourbeau nor Schroeder are at the bench.

–But then Phil calls Bourbeau’s name early.

–Castonguay ties it early in the second off a Colliton steal. 1-1.

–A brief five-on-three for Bridgeport on back-to-back penalties, Lagace trip/Byron slash. That passes easily after a Pirates clear, but the Sound Tigers will have a chance on the second minor.

–Just 23 seconds out of the box, Byron rushes up the right wing and scores high on Koskinen for a 2-1 Portland lead.

–And just 12 seconds after that, Portland gets it quickly up ice, and on a second chance, rookie Luke Adam scores his 20th. 3-1.

–And now a penalty to come on Bridgeport. And now a long five-on-three. Ullstrom rough, Hisey hook.

–But now Byron high-sticks Wotton to make it a four-on-three for 47 seconds.

–T.J. Brennan scores on the four-on-three to make it 4-1 Portland. Three points for Mark Parrish.

–And back and forth, Colliton to Ullstrom, right before the power play ends, Bridgeport cuts it to 4-2. Colliton and Castonguay have two points.

–Actually, the time is officially 13:35, exactly two minutes after the Byron goal, which I think makes it not a PPG regardless of what’s on the penalty clock. We’ll see if I remember right.

–Colin Stuart scores on a Castonguay tripping minor. Gragnani has three points now. It’s 5-2. And then it gets rough.

–Those penalties manage to offset. But then Gallant goes looking for trouble, and then Tuzzolino gets the only penalty. One minute of power-play time for Bridgeport in this period, then one more in the next if they don’t score.

–It’s 5-2 after two.

–Third about to begin.

–Figren draws a quick penalty, and then Rakhshani scores on a rebound eight seconds into the five-on-three. They’ll have almost two minutes on Stuart’s hooking minor.

—Stuart scores off a turnover to make it 6-3, just about three minutes into the third.

–Marcinko and Tuzzolino tussle. Roughing penalties. Phil notes that he doesn’t see Benn Olson anywhere. By the way, Joensuu’s last AHL fight before tonight was April 5, 2009. His opponent? Benn Olson.

–Ullstrom (who, the tweets note, turned the puck over on the second Stuart goal) goes for hooking with 14 minutes left. The Pirates are 3-for-5 on the power play.

–Bridgeport kills that, but right off the draw on a Wotton interference penalty, Adam scores. It’s 7-3 with 11:04 to go.

–And right after that, Chris Frank goes for a high-stick. The Pirates are 4-for-7.

–And Derek Whitmore scores Portland’s fifth power-play goal, a Bridgeport team record. It’s 8-3, and Mikko Koskinen’s night is over. Eight is one short of the Bridgeport team record. Actually, 11 combined goals is one short of Bridgeport’s team record, too.

–This thing mercifully ends: Portland 8, Bridgeport 3.

–”There are a lot of things we’re doing well,” Pat Bingham said. “The PK isn’t one of them, and keeping the puck out of our net isn’t one of them.” He said he wanted to look at the video before he called out what brought all those goals about tonight. He didn’t sound thrilled with Ragusin. He expects Olson to be out tomorrow (undisclosed, of course); they’re looking for bodies. He had nothing to add on Landry.

More from up there.

So that’s three games this week, and three games where someone has snapped a long scoring drought. Today, Wednesday’s guy buried three more. And the guy breaking the drought Sunday? Only scored the game-winner.

One guy can’t do it all, not if you’re going to win. They’ve had other guys chipping in. Certainly, those guys were doing things besides scoring. But when they’re putting pucks in the net on top of it?

“You expect yourself to score. They expect themselves to score,” Brandon Svendsen said. “We’re working in practice on going to the net. … Ully, he’s doing a great job. He’s going to the net, and he’s scoring goals. We got four last night. We got four tonight.”

And for the first time in 29 days, four was enough. Four was one more than enough. Svendsen helped make sure of it, blocking a shot in the last 10 seconds — unfortunately blocking it with his hand. Svendsen was hurting but said he thought he’d be OK. Anton Klementyev broke up a rush with just under seven minutes to play and had to be helped off; he was limping around the room, which is substantially more pressure than he was putting on his left ankle when he left the ice.

“There were a lot of solid efforts,” Pat Bingham said.

“I’ve been telling the guys, we can play with everybody. We weren’t taking that next step to beat anybody. Today, we did.”

The penalty kill was sharp, for the most part, except that one rush that turned into the first Manchester goal. Mikko Koskinen was pretty good. The power play only got one chance, but it made it count.

They didn’t have Dylan Reese after warmup (didn’t catch what happened; something upper body, I think). Down to five defensemen, those guys did solid work.

“We were able to dress an extra forward, and I challenged the forwards to take over the game,” Bingham said. “The forwards were trying, getting in on the forecheck, working, competing.” Guys you don’t expect to hit were hitting. Bourbeau fought. Svendsen fought when he didn’t like a hit that Muzzin put on Rob Hisey; despite the extra roughing minor Svendsen got, “those are the kind of penalties we’ll kill off any time,” Bingham said.

It all added up to a win. Remember those?

….

And given the header, my lead should have been “The end came for Bridgeport (today),” right? Hey, only 15 points back of Hartford with 24 to play.

Ullstrom’s was the 23rd hat trick (not counting Jason Krog’s in the playoffs) in team history. They seem to cluster a bit, date-wise. There have been five in April. There are two on Dec. 16 and two others within a week on either side. And now they have one on Feb. 20, Feb. 22 (Bergenheim’s four, 2006) and Feb. 23 (Hunter, 2003). What does that mean? Nothing. Sorry. Thanks for reading.

Bingham had lots of praise for Ullstrom: “He’s been playing quite well even when he wasn’t producing. His play without the puck, his faceoffs, his D-zone coverage, everything he’s doing.”

Nice BBC piece on the history of “Mack the Knife“. Brecht, Weill, Lenya, Darin, Fitzgerald, Armstrong, Gollum, and a content warning out front**. Tell me how you go wrong. (Limited time only, BTW.)

Rediscovered while poking around YouTube for the Gallant-Rechlicz fight (OK, just killing time): And why can’t we understand Dutch? (I imagine this is what it’s like to be on drugs. Everything looks and sounds familiar, but it doesn’t quite sound right.)

Team’s off tomorrow. See you Tuesday. We’ll have a chat at 1:30 as usual.

*-Seriously, I saw that headline so many times in four years of college that it’s simply my default. Sorry.
**-Which I’m just gonna assume is for the Marxism, not the murder and mayhem.

Rough start. A goal in the first four minutes. So-so in the middle. No traffic around the goalie (right up to, really, the last shot — nothing really in front of Dalton for that Motherwell drive). Rough at the end. A four-on-two, basically.

A loss at home, with two tired teams running into each other, and not at full speed — although the team that won isn’t the one that had last night off.

“We took some things for granted. We were a little cute with the puck,” Pat Bingham said.

“Even when we got momentum surges, we didn’t have a net presence. We didn’t screen the goaltender or converge for rebounds. We didn’t manage the game like we needed to take advantage, possibly, of a tired team, a team succeptible to feeling sorry for itself had we jumped to a 2-0 lead.”

Well, that didn’t happen.

….

Brandon Svendsen re-signed, another PTO. The last one expired after that game.

Ty Wishart was spotted in the room. He’ll presumably practice with the team tomorrow.

Not a bad day for the ’09-10 alumni: Aside from Jeremy Reich’s GWG, Trevor Smith scored four for Syracuse.

It’s Canada-United States again, but this time in the World Junior semifinals.

More tomorrow.

Sitting out are Dustin Kohn (“he wanted to play,” Jack Capuano said, but they figured there’s no sense pushing him), Jean Bourbeau and Tomas Marcinko, day-to-day, all of them. Also out is Justin DiBenedetto, “upper body” after scuffling with Tim Kennedy, and he’s to be reevaluated.

So Justin Taylor gets his first AHL game in Connecticut, and Brandon Svendsen flies in from Kalamazoo. He had 13 points in nine games there. He’s in DiBenedetto’s spot.

At least in the rushes, Hartford is somewhat mixed up from last night’s lines. We’ll see if that sticks. One to scratch at this instant.

Bridgeport goaltending remains on rotation.

BRIDGEPORT
F: Sim-Hisey-Rakhshani
Svendsen-Ullstrom-Joensuu (A)
Haley-Colliton-Figren
Taylor-Romano-Yablonski
D: Motherwell-Hamonic
Katic-Reese (A)
Wotton (C)-Klementyev
G: Lawson
Koskinen

HARTFORD
F: DiDiomete-Garlock-J.Williams
Dupont-Kennedy-Zuccarello
Byers (C)-Tessier-McKelvie
Soryal-Newbury (A)-(scratch-N.Williams)
Donati
D: Redden (A)-Nightingale
McDonagh-Kundratek
Valentenko-Baldwin
G: Johnson
Talbot

R: Cozzan. L: Simeon, Colby.

Fuses alert: As Hartford finished up its line rushes, DiDiomete’s momentum (we’ll imagine) carried him over the red line into Colliton. Colliton turned to take a look. Hamonic went to talk to DiDiomete. Byers went to back up DiDiomete. Yablonski went to back up Hamonic and wound up talking to Soryal. You think last night’s over, or not?