Soundin' Off

I’ve already strained a metaphor here, but what the heck. Bridgeport stood up to Syracuse’s high-powered offense. They blocked shots, got in lanes, gave Kevin Poulin a look at the most dangerous shots. And those dangerous shots happened. And Poulin stopped pretty much everything he possibly could’ve stopped.

And it all happened, in the first period, when the Crunch was coming hard, as Ty Wishart stood up to one of Syracuse’s big guns, Patrick Maroon, who’d almost run Trevor Frischmon through the endboards.

“I felt sorry for the old guy,” Wishart said with a chuckle. “Everyone would’ve done it, especially for a guy like Frisch, who works so hard and does so much for this team.”

Syracuse put four shots on Poulin on that extra minor, but seconds after that expired, Josh Brittain grabbed hold of Mark Katic. Seconds after that, Tony Romano was putting home a Rhett Rakhshani pass. Six minutes after that, David Ullstrom was potting the rebound of Calvin de Haan’s right-point shot.

And Bridgeport was well on its way. Not least because Poulin was ridiculous. Again.

….

On New Year’s Day, Bridgeport woke up with the worst record in the Eastern Conference, 12-17-3-1. You knew that. Hershey woke up with the best record in the Eastern Conference, 19-8-3-3. At this instant, Bridgeport is 39-24-3-6, 87 points, with four of those wins by shootout, so 35 tiebreaker wins (ROW). After tonight’s loss to Wilkes-Barre, Hershey is 38-22-4-7, 87 points, with seven shootout wins, so 31 ROW. Though the Bears have a game in hand, Bridgeport has a better record. That’s what kind of second half this has become.

The Whale won in overtime to stay five points back; Bridgeport’s magic number is five for the division. The win clinched a finish ahead of both Syracuse and Manchester, so even if Hartford catches Bridgeport, the Sound Tigers can’t finish lower than sixth. And they’re three points behind St. John’s, which has a game in hand and most likely the tiebreaker.

Poulin has won seven in a row, tying Nathan Lawson’s AHL-career-opening streak for second in team history. Anders Nilsson won nine earlier this year. His 10th consecutive start, with Sudsie Maharaj back in town, tied the regular-season team record, which he already had a part of; he should break it tomorrow. (Rick DiPietro played 21 in a row: the last game of 2001-02, plus all 20 playoff games.) Poulin’s 24 wins are second only to DiPietro’s 30 in that inaugural season. His 46 games this year tie Wade Dubielewicz (2005-06) for second behind DiPietro’s 59. DiPietro made 1,407 saves that year; Poulin is up to 1,318. (Dubielewicz made 1,362 in 2005-06.)

Prescout. The Bruins’ hopes are barely alive, but they’re extant.

Adirondack won’t go away, either.

Minnesota Duluth’s Kenny Reiter had arrived by the end of the game. His teammate Jack Connolly won the Hobey Baker. Dan Clarke, meanwhile, was released from his ATO.

And finally, Norfolk. For crying out loud.

If Bridgeport wins tonight, its magic number will be no higher than five for the division; it will also clinch a finish no worse than sixth. If Bridgeport loses tonight, well, hold off on all that.

Tomas Marcinko appears to be in; Tyler McNeely did take the warmup. Syracuse has one to scratch as well, and all indications were John Kurtz. Edit: McNeely and Kurtz.

BRIDGEPORT
F: Persson-Romano-Rakhshani
Halmo-Frischmon (A)-Backman
Ullstrom-Mouillierat-DiBenedetto (A)
Howes-Marcinko-Riley
(McNeely-scratch)
D: de Haan-Wishart (A)
Ness-Landry
Katic-Oleksy
G: Poulin
Clarke

SYRACUSE
F: Maroon-Holland-Palmieri
J.Mitchell-Holzapfel-Sexton
Caputi-McMillan-Jacques (A)
Brittain-Schofield-Bodie (A)
(Kurtz-scratch)
D: Cumiskey (A)-Schaus
Guentzel-Clark
McGinnis-Carle
G: Tarkki
Bobkov

R: Skilliter, Lemelin. L: Demers, Wahl.

Meanwhile, if you haven’t seen it or read about it, John Tortorella got fined $20,000 for this last night.

And Chris Minard received the AHL’s Fred T. Hunt Award for sportsmanship, determination and dedication to hockey.

No Syracuse for us. We’ll be listening to Jason Lockhart on AHL Live (Edit: try this) and following Lindsay Kramer and Jamie on Twitter.

Bridgeport goes for its seventh consecutive win on the road. Appears the same lineup, though not sure about the goalie.

Minor alumni note: Binghamton traded Max Gratchev to Springfield, though he’ll remain in the ECHL for now.

–Poulin starts again, says Jamie, vs. Tarkki. Both played well last night.

–Referee Darcy Burchell works his first Bridgeport game. NHL hire out of Hamilton.

–I’m getting nothing on AHL Live, but the Crunch’s flagship is streaming now.

–As the game gets going, they mention Gillies’ toughness as an enforcer. He was a pretty good force last night without dropping the gloves. Forced a few turnovers as Phantoms heard footsteps. Haley gets called for charging here early.

–Kyle Palmieri’s 25th gives him the AHL goal-scoring lead and gives the Crunch a 1-0 lead. Shots are 10-1 on the sheet.

–Mouillierat gets it at the front of the net and puts it in. Jamie says Ullstrom’s forecheck helped get the puck.

–The teams have combined for four penalties (alternating) in just over six minutes here. The Crunch are going to their third power play after these messages.

–No, never mind, coincidental minors, four-on-four, PPs remain 2-2.

–Box here, by the way.

–It’s 1-1 after one, and Bridgeport will begin the third with 1:39 of power-play time thanks to a J.F. Jacques tripping penalty. Shots were, I think, 11-1 Syracuse; they appear to be 13-9 to end the period.

–Interesting that on the radio the Syracuse color man said there’ll be three seconds of four-on-three, that Jamie and Lindsay both say there’s 1:37 left on Jacques’ penalty, but the tweets earlier said Jacques went in with 20.9 left in the period, and the box says 18:05 for the coincidental minors and 19:39 (as you’d expect from 20.9) for Jacques’ penalty. Did the penalty clocks run an extra two seconds after the period?

–With Gillies off for interference, Peter Holland makes it 2-1.

–It’s almost 11 minutes into the second, and Bridgeport is stuck on the 11 shots it had after the Jacques penalty ended.

–Bridgeport is no longer stuck on the 11 shots. Two more out of nowhere. Poulin meanwhile stones a couple of Crunch in tight.

–Haley off for slashing Palmieri’s stick, and Palmieri sets up Holland for a 3-1 lead late in the second. The Crunch are 3-for-4 on the power play.

–The Sound Tigers survive a DiBenedetto tripping minor but trail the Crunch 3-1 after two, 20 minutes away from their first road loss since New Year’s Eve.

–I lost the feed for a couple of minutes, but as it comes back, Casey Cizikas scores through traffic, extending his scoring streak to five and cutting Syracuse’s lead to 3-2 early in the period.

–The puck crosses the line behind Tarkki, Haley goes into Tarkki, Fraser drops Haley. It winds up a four-on-four and no goal with 13:13 left.

–And now a long four-on-three for Bridgeport with Holland going.

–Syracuse kills it off with about 10 minutes to go.

–McMillan (Jason and co. believe) taps in a feed from Clark (who gets credit at the moment) to give the Crunch a two-goal lead again with 8:33 left.

–Hartford has lost in regulation, so if it gets you, Bridgeport will be in first at the break no matter what happens in this one. And if this score holds up, the division will be separated, top to bottom, by three points.

–McMillan does get the goal, and now Colliton for a hold with about five minutes left.

–Haley scores a short-handed goal off a Cizikas faceoff win to cut it to 4-3.

–They made a big deal on the radio, by the way, about Colliton taking that penalty. Oleksy is listed on the gamesheet. Either way. One-goal game, getting late in that penalty, whoever’s serving it. Edit: Jamie has Colliton, too.

–Possible they intended to put in 15-McMillan for the goal and put in 15-Oleksy for the penalty. McMillan’s goal isn’t in the box yet. Poulin to the bench with about a minute left.

–And Bridgeport ties it. Howes on a rebound with 30 seconds to go.

–On to overtime. That’s Howes’ first goal since Dec. 26.

–Poulin robs Maroon in front. Cizikas, meanwhile, has three points for the third game in a row since they named him to the all-star game.

–On to the bonus round. Bridgeport still hasn’t lost with the clock running since New Year’s, 11 games now, tied for the third-longest such streak in team history and the second-longest on the road. (That’s straight unbeaten in the era before the shootout, and win/shootout loss in the shootout era.)

–Howes and Ullstrom score, Syracuse goes 0-for-4, and it’s over: Bridgeport 5, Syracuse 4 (SO), final. Quite a comeback.

–The shots have changed a couple of times, but it looks like 30 saves for Poulin. He sums it up on Twitter.

–Brent Thompson compared it to the last Norfolk game. “We dominated the third period, but it went as a loss,” Thompson said. Tonight, they got rewarded. Five-on-five, he was pretty happy, except for the penalties (“we were very undisciplined, the slashes, the chopping. We needed to move our feet and get ourselves in body position”), which led to his issue with the penalty kill (“you want to know about the three goals, it was three turnovers. Each one, we didn’t clear the puck, and they took advantage.” That has kind of come and gone the past few weeks, but it has been there before). But a gutsy win. He said Haley’s short-hander was a bullet — “you’ve got to take a look at that shot” — off Cizikas’ faceoff win. And Howes, “our objective was shoot and get secondary chances. We needed net drive.” He did that, and he found the rebound.

So, all-star break. We’re going out where the sand’s turning to gold. All Atkinson, all the time. (Much of the time, anyway.)

One long shift turned into a wide-open game-winner. One more minute turned into a two-goal lead. An empty-net goal from the other side of the rink put it away.

One little broken-play power-play goal was the difference for over 40 minutes. Bridgeport tied it on one nice setup and one nice shot.

That was the only one Pielmeier gave them. After a one-day delay, they got this one in.

Seven remain.

….

Chat tomorrow at 1:30.

Attendance: 6,901, and the Nighthawks thank you. Obviously, that’s based off Sunday’s sales/distributions. Was surprised to see 300 people or so show up, honestly. It looked, as noted on Twitter, like a really bad Wednesday. Some spots would have been more full on a really bad Wednesday, but still.

Justin DiBenedetto, best I can tell, is day-to-day. Given the way he was mugging behind me while I was trying to talk to Mark Katic, my guess is he’s better than not.

Tony Romano is Bridgeport’s nominee for the Yanick Dupre Award for charity and community work.

(And yes, it’s that time of year… Fake Team Awards balloting begins this weekend. Keep an eye out.)

Eric Hornick did the math: Al Montoya will be a Group 6 free agent — that is, unrestricted.

And RIP, Lattimore Brown.

Players have been all over those trouble spots with neither incident nor seeming concern. Looks like a normal game. Except that it’s a quarter to one and there’s like 50 people here.

Stuff happens.

The same 18 Sound Tigers and 19 Crunch players showed up for warmup, with the same apparent starting goalies. Syracuse never rolled lines before getting the heck off the ice yesterday, so we can’t know if this is how the Crunch planned it; they have one to scratch. Bridgeport tweaked its defense pairs, with Katic and Olson switching places.

BRIDGEPORT
F: Romano-Colliton (A)-Rakhshani
Pereira-Ullstrom-Figren
McNeely-Hisey-Day
Ginand-Svendsen-Neigum
D: Olson-Reese (A)
Katic-Bidlevskii
Ness-Wotton (C)
G: Koskinen
Lawson

SYRACUSE
F: Deschamps-Green (A)-Mitchell
Maroon-Bonino-Palmieri
Macenauer-Schofield-McGrattan
Kurtz-Lampe-Kennedy
D: de Gray-DiPenta (C)
Clark-Guenin (A)
Mitera-Zimmerman
(Newton-scratch)
G: Pielmeier
Levasseur

R: J.Koharski. L: Spannaus, Patry.

Yesterday’s officials, none of whom are back: R: Kaval. L: Redding, Galvin.

A whole new set of officials. A whole new set of people here doing game ops, off-ice officiating, everything.

Since I’m assuming most people aren’t here, I’ll probably overtweet this thing @fornabaioctp.

The markings on the ice for the NCAA tournament were painted over the Sound Tigers’ markings, with more ice on top of that for the college games. After Yale and Duluth finished up last night, that ice and paint had to come up.

Most of it did. Some of it didn’t. Digging up what didn’t was part of what led to today’s game being postponed due to the ice conditions. They’ll play tomorrow at 1 (Syracuse wants to get out as quickly as possible, in no small part because the Crunch has an 11 a.m. game in Toronto on Wednesday). Free general admission on Monday, if you can make it. Those who held tickets can get refunds from where they bought them, or they can exchange them for tickets to any of the three other remaining home games.

Lousy break. Looked like a great crowd for Frans Nielsen bobblehead day.

Lines for a game that didn’t happen:

BRIDGEPORT
F: Romano-Colliton (A)-Rakhshani
Pereira-Ullstrom-Figren
McNeely-Hisey-Day
Ginand-Svendsen-Neigum
D: Katic-Reese (A)
Ness-Wotton (C)
Olson-Bidlevskii
G: Koskinen
Lawson

We shall see if they remain the same. Never actually made it down to that end of the back of the house.

Late win for the Sound Tigers in Syracuse after they gave away a two-goal lead early in the third. Wes O’Neill scores his third goal, and can you collect any three more-clutch goals in a month from a stay-at-home defenseman? Three points for both Bailey and Rakhshani.

Here’s Lindsay Kramer‘s gamer.

I missed it, didn’t even listen — did I mention here? Sorry; know I did on Twitter — to witness the official end of #ctfb season. (St. Joseph 49, Ansonia 28.) So we’re all but officially into #cthk season, right?

Had a couple of links I’d wanted to post. Don’t know where I put them. Oh well. One was that Ryan Johnson signed with Rockford, set eventually to play in the AHL for the first time in over a decade.

Prescout. Goal for Jason Pitton.

The big club… man.

And finally: Hail, men of Fordham, hail.

Think of it like a little bit of rope-a-dope. After they had to kill seven penalties against Springfield, they didn’t want to do it again. They had seen the Crunch get frustrated. They wanted to let them do it again.

Mission accomplished.

“Fortunately for us, we were able to capitalize on some opportunities on the power play,” Brett Motherwell said.

Twice in the last six minutes of the first period, actually. Away they went.

(And besides, really, would you fight Jon Mirasty? Really?)

—

Two other crucial things for Bridgeport: beat Lowell and Wilkes-Barre beat Norfolk, and neither one needed overtime to do it. The Sound Tigers are one point behind third-place Manchester and in a dead-even tie with Lowell, so on the lead in the season series, Lowell’s in fourth, and Bridgeport’s in fifth. Not to worry: The Sound Tigers are a point ahead of WBS and two ahead of Norfolk, so Bridgeport’s in third in the East Division.

Team won’t be skating tomorrow, so if something comes down about a call-up for Dustin Kohn, it’d more likely come from Katie Strang or Chris Botta at a morning skate. But we’ll see what we can get. No word on Justin DiBenedetto, who didn’t play the third but was dressed and on his way out when we got through with Jack Capuano. And Tyler Haskins said he was OK and was more concerned about getting a whistle there than anything when he stayed down.

Munroe’s assist was the first for a Bridgeport goalie in almost a year (Lawson, April 10 vs. Springfield).

Edit: Mikko Koskinen won again, with 31 saves on 35 shots.

The Zambonis will be playing on the ice here April 11, and they’re helping sell tickets for a good cause.

Jeremy Yablonski somehow had three sports hernias.

Could be a milestone weekend around here. Mark Wotton’s next game will tie him with Steve Regier, 290 games played in a Bridgeport uniform. And Sunday brings an anniversary… the oldest anniversary in Bridgeport Sound Tigers history. It’ll be 10 years since the AHL announced that Roy Boe was bringing a team here.

And RIP, Robert Culp.

Scott Munroe’s starting his second consecutive game tonight.

It’s the first time since Nov. 15-20 that the team has broken rotation, at least when Rick DiPietro or Martin Biron weren’t involved.

Morency replaces Smith in the lineup. Martin moves up to join Radja and Bentivoglio, Figren moves up to join Haley and Haskins, and Morency slots in with DiBenedetto and Marcinko.

Meanwhile, Mr. Mirasty was leaning over the red line near the start of warmup to have a chat with Mr. Haley as the latter stretched. For all we know, they were chatting about what a nice day it was. Still, would have loved to have been able to listen in.

BRIDGEPORT
F: Reich (A)-Mauldin-Joensuu
Bentivoglio-Radja-Martin
Haley-Haskins-Figren
DiBenedetto-Marcinko-Morency
D: Witt (A)-Gleed
Wotton (C)-Flood
Motherwell-Gannon
G: Munroe
Lawson

SYRACUSE
F: Sestito-Fritsche (A)-Kana
[LaValle-Smotherman]-Moore-Kolarik
McGrath-Frischmon (A)-Mayorov
Mirasty-Kronschnabel-(Harvey-scratch)
Neuber
D: Holden-Bell (A)
Sigalet-Regner
Ratchuk-Liffiton
G: Taylor
Lalande

R: J.Hebert. L: Colby, Spannaus.

And this seen from Chris Botta: Terrific line in the Newsday rant today. A reader wrote that even though the game is in 3-D, the Rangers will still come out flat.

There is only one thing that matters tonight: Steve Chris Holt scored a goal for Binghamton with 23.6 seconds remaining tonight. Only the 10th by a goalie in AHL history.

It was a power-play goal, too, BTW. And I wonder how many goaltenders’ goals have had two assists?

Oh, and it turns outtheSoundTigerswonagame,too.

Only caught bits and pieces (including moments when Morency apparently played agitator, when he’s at his best), missed every goal, but Capuano said the game improved from a sloppy start. He was happy that Reich got seven shots. Good things happen when you shoot the puck, and all that.

Here’s Lindsay Kramer’s gamer and blog notebook.

Six wins in a row for the first time in over three years. Though the Penguins came back from 4-1 and won in overtime, Bridgeport is now two points behind both Manchester and Lowell.

They’ll be home Saturday. Feels like a long time since they’ve been home, doesn’t it? I’ll have covered something like eight high school and college games in the two weeks between Sound Tigers games. Weird.

Mikko Koskinen stopped 36 of 38 at Stockton in a 6-2 win.

Story on prospect goalie Kevin Poulin.

Forgot to post this yesterday, from Jonathan: Mitch Fritz had a day against Wilkes-Barre.

Vote For Rory Fitzpatrick says he’s retiring after this year, Kevin O. reports. Earlier from Binghamton, Jeremy Yablonski appears to be done for the year.

A tip of cap to Gary Lindgren and the Amity Spartans, 7-5 winners in the Division II final tonight.

And just tweeted by Greg Wyshinski: old-school Carvel commercial. Thank you.

Otherwise engaged tonight, but will try to listen in on the Sound Tigers when possible. Appears the live stream comes on WHEN up there.

Back afterward with perhaps some postgame notes.