Soundin' Off

Weird that it’s over like that. It happens.

It does appear that Kevin Poulin’s 50 saves on 54 shots set a team record. Wade Dubielewicz made 45 on 48 shots in Game 6 of the 2006 playoffs. His 22 in the second aren’t a record, though; Dubielewicz made 26 on 27 in the second period that night. That game also ended on an overtime power-play goal, Ryan Stone’s.

Did up the stats today after the chat. Updated the all-time lists. Most notably, Rhett Rakhshani moved into 10th in all-time scoring, two points ahead of Jesse Joensuu. Jeremy Colliton caught Jeff Hamilton in one category: He has more shots than Hamilton, 685-653. (Jeff’s still got him by 12 goals.) The team’s games-played list: (1) Wotton 368, (2) Colliton 326, (3) Regier 290, (4) Haley 247, (5) Marcinko 243, (6) Mapletoft 240.

Considering that fully half of the franchise’s playoff games occurred in the first two seasons, this probably isn’t stunning, but… of the Sound Tigers’ top 18 players in playoff scoring, not one played for the team after 2006. The 19th was Trevor Smith, 2-5-7 in 10 playoff games over two springs. Those 18 players include eight who weren’t in the 2002 playoff run.

Bridgeport is 43,833 away from 2,000,000 fans all-time. (ahemyes, tickets distributedahem) Take out two games at Nassau and two in the Maritimes, and they’re 77,198 away from 2,000,000 at Harbor Yard. So there’s that to look forward to, sometime in the first half of next season.

….

Below the fold are selected quotes from some of the people I pestered for a few minutes on Monday. And then we’ll go to summertime blog mode. The playoffs (Sean Bergenheim, again!), the Worlds, we’ll keep an eye as best we can. They’ll make me work, no doubt, but I’ll be around. Hope you’ve enjoyed stuff here for seven years and in the paper for 11.

Thanks to the bosses. Thanks to the PR folks and the league and the organeyezation and the fellow writers all over this league. Thanks to players and staff and coaches and Leni, Matt and Kevin and everybody else over there for putting up with me.

And most of all, thank you for reading and being here.

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(more…)

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.

The Islanders announced the swap Monday morning.

Afternoon edit:

The ECHL transactions suggest that Wes Cunningham is coming back up from Greenville. He’s 2-20-22 for the Road Warriors, around which he went 0-0-0, minus-2 for Bridgeport during the rough stretch in mid-December (at Hartford, at Hershey).

(Exciting/scary fact: A PTO signed next Tuesday expires with the end of the regular season.)

Chris Botta on the Islanders’ arena saga.

Darien’s Hugh Jessiman signs with Abbotsford.

Tip of cap to Mike Comrie.

And we’ll chat Tuesday at 1:30.

Playoff intensity, playoff crowd, almost playoff weather*, and now they’re matching lines like it’s May.

“Every team has key guys,” Jeremy Colliton said. “We’re playing a team game. Everybody has to be responsible defensively.”

Colliton’s line and Trevor Frischmon’s line drew a lot of the defensive responsibilities this weekend, Frischmon against the Falcons’ big line Saturday and both (mostly Colliton, but both) against Wolski on Sunday. The Whale got one goal, when they were working to get the personnel off against the wrong matchup and then back on when Wolski hopped off the bench and stole the puck.

Bridgeport tied it soon after, won it much later. In between, it was a whole lot of Jon Landry and Ty Wishart against Wolski-Newbury-Zuccarello.

“It’s fun to be lined up against the top line,” Landry said. “Those three, they’re a pretty talented group.”

“Those guys are great hockey players,” Thompson said. “They’ve played in the NHL. … Wishart has played in the NHL. Landry’s a big guy who can move the puck.”

Thompson liked, too, that it gave Cizikas’ and Mouillierat’s line a chance against other guys.

“I really don’t care who plays against who. You get to the next level, you’ve got to be solid defensively.”

….

Speaking of the next level… Nobody saying anything, but there were signs Ty Wishart could be getting a call up. Not necessarily relatedly, ECHL transactions say Benn Olson is coming back. Olson had no points, was a minus-2 and had 46 penalty minutes in 11 games with Alaska.

Replay Scoreboard: Second use, 37 seconds of overtime. David Ullstrom shot goes in over Chad Johnson’s glove and off the back bar. Mats Zuccarello heads to the scorer’s table and asks for a review; Jon McIsaac obliges. The monitor has to come up from under the table. They take a moment to cue up the video. McIsaac confirms the play and comes out after about five minutes pointing to center ice.

(They are, as Dave Andrews said last month, working out the kinks.)

Sound Tigers shooters are back to .500 on penalty shots, 11-for-22, after Scott Howes’ miss. They’re 1-for-3 this year, Tyler McNeely stopped at Springfield on Nov. 12 and Nino Niederreiter’s goal at Hershey the next day.

Speaking of, Thompson said McNeely’s X-rays were negative.

Ullstrom now has three points in overtime, tied for 12th all-time in team history.

Cizikas’ point streak ended at eight.

Attendance was 7,693, three short of the season high and 15th all-time. Nine of the top 16 crowds have come on visits from teams from Hartford.

New Canaan’s Jack Downing has a goal in four of the past five games for Binghamton.

Haven’t read it yet, but I’m sure this is going to be great stuff on Steve MacIntyre from Jonathan Bombulie.

And birthday boy Matt Bain headed out quickly. Smart man. Though there was a conspiratorial little huddle in the hallway after he left, something about what was going to happen to his room…

*-I take that back. It has been fine out there, but it’s pretty darn cold tonight.

There were moments when Springfield could have gotten itself going, could have awoken. Bridgeport didn’t let the Falcons into it instead, and any time Bridgeport let up, Anders Nilsson was there.

When you’re double-checking the team records with four minutes left in the second, it’s been a pretty easy night for the team you’re covering.

“Guys were in shooting lanes. They won all the one-on-one battles,” Brent Thompson said.

“Details like that … our guys paid better attention to those.”

They did. There was one kind of scrambly shift (and Alex Giroux scored on it); there was one early shift when someone didn’t realize that Trevor Frischmon had gone for equipment repairs, and they played with four men for about 10-15 seconds. Other than that?

All four lines produced (DiBenedetto’s on the power play, but go with me) a goal. “We’ve got four lines that can score, that can defend, that do either,” Micheal Haley said. “That’s obviously a big advantage in this league.” Frischmon scored off Matt Donovan’s breakaway pass, and that line did a nice job, matched against the Falcons’ overloaded first line.

That kind of night.

….

Thompson said he hadn’t heard a result on Tyler McNeely’s X-rays, but he didn’t expect to have McNeely available Sunday. He went off with a towel over one of his hands; reports inside the barn seemed to go along those lines.

Edit: Forgot to mention, but the Sound Tigers were very thankful and complimentary to Aquarion for getting the water-main problem fixed in time to play the game tonight.

For Haley’s first AHL hat trick (but not first as a pro), he didn’t get a lot of hats… but his goalie had one on the bench.

“I don’t know what I did over the break,” said Ty Wishart, who had two goals tonight, three in the past two games, after one goal in the first 45 games. “I’ve got some luck on my side, I think, so they’re going in. I’ve been taking enough one-timers.” But he also noted that it’s good for the Sound Tigers’ two-man advantage unit, which had only been 3-for-14 but scored twice tonight. “Nice to see it pay off.” Appears to be his first two-goal game in just over two years. His teammates got a few more tonight than his teammates did back then.

Four-assist games for Sound Tigers: Blake Comeau, Robert Nilsson, Mike Iggulden, Greg Mauldin (in a five-point game), Jeremy Colliton twice in two weeks last spring… and now Kael Mouillierat.

There were 11 seven-goals-for games plus one more in the playoffs (completing the St. John’s sweep), but there was only one 7-0 game (Jan. 21, 2006, at Wilkes-Barre), so this ties the team’s greatest margin of victory. (Hmm. Early wraparound that banks in. Clearly a recipe for seven-goal wins.) The Falcons hadn’t lost by this much in about four years.

Prescout. From what I saw from the Rangers writers on Twitter today, they’re expecting Wolski and Woywitka to remain with the Whale.

Tip of cap to Roy Sommer on his 500th AHL coaching win.

A belated happy birthday to Jamie Palatini.

And RIP, Whitney Houston.

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.

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.

…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.

Bridgeport has made no apparent reassignments and has apparently signed no one to late AHL contracts (no surprise on either count). The list seems pretty, pardon the expression, clear. It’ll be released Tuesday morning.

The Islanders sent Ty Wishart down this afternoon, saying Radek Martinek should be ready to play.

The weekly chat will be here Tuesday at 1:30. (See Clear Day stuff below)

Edit: There was room for only one surprise on Bridgeport’s Clear Day list, and it would only be a moderate one at that. It’s Micheal Haley who’s absent, apparently gone for good. (He could still be sent down, technically, but he’d have to go in residence and could only play in emergency.)

The list, in lineup form:

F: Rakhshani-Hisey-Joensuu
DiBenedetto-Ullstrom-Colliton
Bourbeau-Romano-Figren
Hilbert-Marcinko-Taylor
Yablonski
D: Katic-Wishart
Kohn-Reese
Motherwell-Wotton
Klementyev
G: Koskinen
Lawson

Obviously, there’s one person on there who hasn’t yet played (and isn’t practicing with the team today, Hilbert isn’t), one who’s played one game since November (Yablonski) and another who was just here on crutches (Klementyev). Instant emergency.

Again, we will chat at 1:30.

Edit2: Should really do the annual explainer.

So you’ve got these 22 names. What do they mean? Basically, if they’re healthy and available (that is, not on recall or suspended), they’re the only ones allowed to play. (There are playoff-share implications, too, but we’ll leave that for now.)

For each goaltender that isn’t available — say, Nathan Lawson is called up — another goaltender can dress, whether he’s on a contract or on a pro tryout. Thus, Joel Martin is fine to dress as long as Lawson remains up.

If three skaters are unavailable — say, Hilbert, Yablonski and Klementyev all have long-term injuries — another skater can dress. For every additional unavailable skater, another can dress. Thus, you’ll theoretically always have 18.

Today, seven skaters from Bridgeport’s list (the three long-term guys, plus Hisey, Ullstrom, Reese and DiBenedetto) were missing, so if they were playing with this group that’s out there for practice, they could dress five more. That would right now be Castonguay, Frank, Gallant… and two other guys. They’re two forwards short this morning.

An exception to this rule: Players on amateur tryouts aren’t affected by this rule, nor are signed junior players (Niederreiter, de Haan). When teams’ college or junior seasons end, AHL teams can sign them to ATOs, and those guys can play at any time, regardless of whether a team is in emergency or not.

The Islanders announced earlier that they’ve called up Ty Wishart, Dylan Reese and Kevin Poulin. They play tomorrow night. Bridgeport is off until Thursday.

In Hershey, Dave Andrews had his annual State of the League press conference this morning. Here’s Jonathan Bombulie’s blog post on it. That “All-Stars vs. European Champion” idea does sound kind of cool.

Will probably be watching the All-Star Game and tweeting if the images move me. (Or liveblogging if they’re moving me too much, but don’t bet on that.)

Edit: And RIP, John Barry.