Soundin' Off

Trevor Smith is up and is in today. It’s his NHL debut, and Capuano had some kind words — much of which should make tomorrow’s paper.

Yann Danis was also up, so back to two goalies here for the time being. Smith is set to go on the Islanders’ week-long road trip, while no one seemed to know that for sure about Danis this morning. The Islanders also report that Mitch Fritz is on waivers.

And so, for the first extended period, the Smith-McLean-Iggulden line is broken up. James Sixsmith has skated up there both days since he got here — for Iggulden yesterday, for Smith today — and may be the candidate. We’ll see what it looks like tomorrow.

As you can infer, Iggulden was back in action today, as was Joe Callahan.

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To find the Islanders game, I just punched in a number that probably hasn’t broadcast Islanders games since the network was called Sportschannel. Wow.

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Be careful out there. Got smacked into in the parking lot this morning. Exciting times. (The posting delay is for family obligations, though, not the paint-swap… though the Smith news would have been up a little earlier if the wireless worked better over there…)

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The preliminary round at the World Juniors concludes today. Canada and the United States play tonight for first place in their pool and a bye to the semifinals. So do Russia and Sweden in the other pool; the Slovaks and the Finns play an elimination game in that pool. The Czechs need only a point against lowly Kazakhstan (outscored 36-0) to clinch a quarterfinal berth from the pool with Canada and the U.S.

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Soundin’ Off Book Club: My Stroke of Insight, by Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor. Taylor, a neuroanatomist, suffered a stroke…

Oh, jeez, here we go again. You and the “brain injury” stuff.

Yeah, but wait: Taylor suffered a stroke — and because she studies all of this, she had a sense, while it was going on, of what was happening to her, when, and how. The first half of the book describes her injury, and then it describes her recovery. (And yeah, frankly, I saw some problems and some breakthroughs that were analogous. The sluggishness for a year and change, things like that.) Fascinating. And the second half of the book describes what it was like to have the discrete, mathematical, verbal half of her brain shut down, leaving the non-verbal half in charge. She describes a feeling of being a liquid, of feeling people’s energy, of being in communion with everything else. No less fascinating. A short and bright read.

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Five favorite headers this year.

And the joke in here was so bad, but I still love it.

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And so this year ends.

I wonder what things will look like at the end of 2009, in this league, in this sport, in this profession of mine. It is a time both thrilling and petrifying. Hang on tight, I suppose.

As noted, for Bridgeport, 2008 was a tidy 45-29-1-5 year, coincidentally 80 games, and 96 points, which is really good but not outstanding enough to win you home ice anytime since the advent of the shootout. (All that matters now, of course, is a pretty good start to 2008-09.)

And for the first time since 2004, the guy who’s listed as head coach on New Year’s Eve is the same guy who was listed as head coach a year earlier.

Detroit and Chicago won the respective Cups this year, although a bunch of Penguins gave both of them their final challenges, so tips of cap to all of them.

Around here, we said hello to the likes of Kyle Okposo (cue the screaming kids), Pierre-Luc Faubert, Brett Pilkington, Luke Fulghum, Justin Bourne, Tyler Mosienko, Rob Hennigar, Pete MacArthur, Jack Hillen, Jesse Joensuu, Tomas Marcinko, Joe Callahan, Brett Skinner, Mike Iggulden, Yann Danis, Peter Mannino, Mitch Fritz, Kurtis McLean, Matt Bertani, Joel Rechlicz (for a bit), Vladimir Nikiforov, Nathan Lawson, Dennis Packard, Len DiCostanzo and Jon Gleed. We said hello again to Chris Lee, Jean Desrochers (there’s one from the past) and James Sixsmith.

We totally didn’t say hello to Scott Gordon, though.

We said goodbye to all-timer Steve Regier, Darryl Bootland, Mike Morrison, Kip Brennan, Drew Fata, Scott Ford, Ted Nolan, Matt Spiller and Bernie Cassell.

We said hello and goodbye to Matt Keith and Colton Fretter. We said hello again and goodbye again to Mark Parrish.

And Thomas Pock toured the metropolitan area.

We said final goodbyes to John Ashley, Mickey Renaud, Ken Reardon, John McConnell, Ned Harkness, Paul “Reg” Newman, Alexei Cherepanov and Bep Guidolin, among others. We the ink-stained lost Jack Falla and Jerome Holtzman and W.C. Heinz.

Those who retired included Mattias Norstrom, Danielle Goyette, Scott Thornton, Mick McGeough, Mikael Renberg, Darren Van Impe, Sami Kapanen (on these shores, anyway), Glen Wesley, Dominik Hasek, Trevor Linden, Rob Shick, Pat Dapuzzo, coach Jeff Dwyer, Dallas Drake, Mariusz Czerkawski, Alyn McCauley, Stu Barnes, Keith Carney and Luke Richardson.

No doubt I’m forgetting people on all those lists.

And just for the fun of it, the Doug Gilmour Memorial “I Retire. Wait, No, I Don’t. Do I?” Award has to go to the returning warrior, Claude Lemieux.

We had some fun this year, talking fifth-overall draft picks back to Daniel Dore, lamenting the Mets, sharing book ideas, playing trivia games. I hope it stays fun for you (or becomes fun, as the case may be) and me in the year to come.

May that be happy and healthy for you and yours.

So if our anonymous commenter would like to lend out his contact list… James Sixsmith was, in fact, here for practice this morning, up from Utah. Yann Danis was here, too, joking that he has become well acquainted with Interstate 95. He was happy to get a full practice in; it has been a while. There’s no sign that they’re looking to break up the three goalies right now, so they’ll all stick around for the time being.

Still no Callahan or Iggulden today, but there’s a chance both are back tomorrow.

Wade Dubielewicz is out in Russia. No idea where he might land. Albany’s Dan LaCouture bolted for Russia.

EDIT: Vladimir Nikiforov was picked for the ECHL All-Star Game.

Hamden’s Jonathan Quick is doing well in L.A. Robert Nilsson in Edmonton, not so much.

And I think you guys have finished off the trivia in fine form, so I’ll set up a link to the answers.

Between the Connecticut Polar Bears Christmas Tournament and the public skating, the boys got kicked to a later practice time and got kicked upstairs. They were split up, defense first and forwards second, and subjected to a Matt Bertani practice with a heck of a lot of skating. Having watched both sets go through it, I’m in sympathy pain.

Rob Hennigar was not among them; he’s been sent to Utah. Like Smith and MacDonald before him, they want him to play lots and build some confidence. It has worked before.

Mike Iggulden was sick, and Joe Callahan was still resting the injury. Jeremy Colliton is back; Yann Danis was back, but was called back to the Islanders before practice.

Oh my goodness, it’s the second time this millennium. (Since Purinton got the only penalties in that Feb. 25, 2007, altercation, I’m not sure I’d say Regier “fought” him…)

Nothing too shocking in Ottawa yesterday. The United States held off the Czechs 4-3, while Canada, um, squeaked one out against Kazakhstan.

Hope you’re enjoying the trivia. While many of those answers have been spot on, the Colin McDonald answer wasn’t the one I was looking for.

Claude Lemieux signed with San Jose but will remain with Worcester if he clears waivers. Tris Wykes sent along the link: The Phantoms are at least talking to Glens Falls.

*-2F05

EDIT: Answers are now here.

Friday’s assignment, BTW, is here. It is kind of wacky to think about it, how a kid who was a sophomore, clearing the zone at Wonderland, in my first full-time year on the high-school hockey beat — how he’s now a Maple Leaf. (The first comment is pretty funny. What was he looking for? “Sifers is minus-6, an atrocity – ship him back out.” Didn’t think I made the kid out to be a Norris candidate. Oh well — at least someone read it.)

Anyway, someone down at the paper came up with the idea to have us reporters submit a 2008 trivia question or two from our beats. You can see the results on page A5 today. I like it. But you probably had a good shot at guessing that.

Mine… didn’t make the cut. Oh well. I tried to think of a couple that not only were of some significance, but also were not so esoteric that a casual reader wouldn’t have had a shot. If my mom reads my stuff as much as she says she does, I think she has a shot at one of them.

–A1) Kip Brennan received the longest suspension in Bridgeport Sound Tigers history in February, when he skated in from behind a Portland player and punched him. For how many games did the AHL suspend Brennan?

–A2) The Bridgeport Sound Tigers were involved in a close playoff race through most of March and April, but they were eliminated on the penultimate day of the season. Who beat them out for fourth place?

And a couple of others from my August adventure, and given that I came back from vacation for it, you’d think they could have at least used one.

–B1) Shelton National reached the Little League World Series with a dramatic, 2-1 win Aug. 9 in the New England Regional final. What was the home city of the team it defeated in that game?

–B3) Name the three teams Shelton National faced in the World Series.

But a few more came to mind, too, and I looked through some lists and came up with a couple of others. And some of these, yeah, they’re pretty esoteric. Like…

1) Which of these players did NOT wear an ‘A’ for Bridgeport in 2008?
   (a) Drew Fata
   (b) Steve Regier
   (c) Matt Keith
   (d) Frans Nielsen
   (e) Trevor Smith

2) This spring, the New York Islanders sent Jeff Tambellini down for the playoffs a week earlier than the rest of his teammates. Why?

3) Former Sound Tiger Jason Krog led the league in goals in 2007-08. Tambellini finished second. How many goals did each player score?

4) The biggest game in team history, April 5, the Sound Tigers led 3-2 and were 20 minutes away from keeping their playoff destiny in their own hands. Who scored the tying and go-ahead goals for Hershey?

5) Which Springfield Falcon did Kip Brennan knock out in a Jan. 12 fight?
   5a) While that was pretty stunning, something was probably far more significant about that game from the local viewpoint. What was it?

6) After a conversation with a Sound Tiger in the penalty boxes Jan. 23, a Philadelphia Phantom swung his stick a couple of times across the scorer’s table. Who were the conversants?
   6a) Who then tried to present public-address announcer Adam Goodman with a helmet?

7) Joey MacDonald fought three times last season. The first was in November 2007 against Binghamton’s Danny Bois. Who were his other two opponents?
On March 21 at Worcester, Bridgeport blew a 4-2 lead in the last minute. Who scored in overtime?

9) Match the quote to the speaker:
    (a) “I’d like to know what girl the goal judge was looking at that he didn’t see the puck hit the middle of the net.”
   (b) “And then Benty (Sean Bentivoglio) smoked me into the wall.”
   (c) “I shoveled it in. I tried to throw the goalie in, too. I wasn’t sure if it would be disallowed.”
   (d) “Those guys are a bunch of bullies over there. They couldn’t put away a sixth-place team. We’re not a sixth-place team. We’re better than our record.”
   (e) “I think I was just happy to get the plus.”
   (f) “The guy did play in the NHL for 18 decades. He was playing when dinosaurs roamed the earth.”
   (g) “Did you get one of me with my gloves off? Happens, like, twice a millennium.”
   (h) “It’s one of those bad bounces that never, ever happens, but it happened.”

   (i) Steve Regier
   (ii) Mike Morrison
   (iii) Paul Bissonnette
   (iv) Bob Woods
   (v) Joey MacDonald
   (vi) Trevor Smith
   (vii) Tim Jackman
   (viii) Drew Fata

10) Chris Busby. Daine Todd. Ryan Cruthers. Joel Rechlicz. Jean Bourbeau. They have what in common?

Hey! No peeking! (If you want to actually try the questions first, they’re here.)

(more…)

Great game to watch. Back and forth. Scoring chances galore. Some turnovers leading to goals, and yeah, Capuano wasn’t thrilled about how some of those five came to be.

Capuano also talked about needing secondary scoring; Smith and Iggulden and McLean can’t do it every night, and when you’re giving five to Wilkes-Barre, they can’t do it alone. The first of the year for both Brett Skinner and Jason Pitton is a start, but there are a lot of other guys on this team with a lot of zeroes on a lot of nights.

They’ll have a long week of practice to work on tightening it up, then come back in the new year with a six-point cushion on a playoff spot.

LINEUPS
BRIDGEPORT
F: Smith-McLean (‘A’)-Iggulden
Bentivoglio-Walter (‘A’)-Joensuu
Packard-Hennigar-Haskins
Pitton-Marcinko-Haley
D: Lee-Skinner
Fraser-Wotton (C)
Hillen-MacDonald
G: Mannino
(Lawson)

WILKES-BARRE/SCRANTON
F: James (A)-Thomas-Caputi
Pesonen-Letestu-Johnson
Goebel-Henrich-Boogaard
Minard-Taffe-Stone (A)
(Daoust-scratch)
D: Cote-Engelland (A)
Mormina-Lovejoy
Cashman-D’Aversa
G: Curry
(Berkhoel)

R: Cozzan. L: Pomento, McNulty.

Remember when Callahan blocked that shot early in Friday night’s game? Do you remember whose shot it was? ‘Cause I wrote down that Callahan blocked Callahan, which I’m, um, pretty sure is wrong. Anyway, that’s why he stayed home: That was hurting. Capuano said he’s day-to-day, as is Dustin Kohn, who’s still feeling it from the Jeremy Yablonski hit last weekend.

Packard again took on Colliton’s penalty-kill time. In the first, rather than use a fourth penalty-kill forward with Jason Pitton in the box, Bridgeport had Kurtis McLean kill the entire minor penalty.

And had Packard scored in the second period instead of hitting the post, Jonathan and I might have had our stories written. Packard grew up around the corner from here.

Tim Wallace was called up to Pittsburgh, but blog regular Danny Richmond was out sick.

“2, N.Y. Islanders, Tambellini 1 (Streit, Bailey), 9:38.” Is that the Hallelujah Chorus? (Looks like some kind of ending, too.)

Kip Brennan played his first game tonight. No penalties (for him — there’s a coach’s-obscenity penalty in there, though), but a minus-1. And Drew Fata scored again.

Jonathan pointed out this Philly story, which speculates Springfield as a possible destination for the Flyers’ kids next year, as well as “(ruling) out Atlantic City, Trenton and the Wachovia Center.”

The first question here is probably closer to being germane for a sports-related blog, but I was more interested in the second.

This is Post 1000 on the blog on this server. Wow. (There are a few hundred on the Lifeboat. Should count those sometime.)

So that’s it for games in calendar-year 2008. Overall record this trip around the sun: 45-29-1-5, 96 points. That sounds pretty good, and it gets you in the playoffs every year, but interestingly, it doesn’t get you home ice in the shootout era. Oh well.

We’ll wrap up the year a little more properly when it gets closer to actually ending.

(Literally)

Jeremy Colliton got called up to fill in for Andy Hilbert, moving Sean Bentivoglio up to the second line. Didn’t see an ‘A’ on anybody on the orangey jerseys; Callahan apparently didn’t make the trip.

I appear to have messed something up dramatically with Wilkes-Barre/Scranton, so we’ll do it old-school and put both sets of lineups in the postgamer.

Cozzan with Pomento and McNulty in stripes.

LINEUPS
BRIDGEPORT
F: Smith-McLean-Iggulden
Bentivoglio-Walter-Joensuu
Packard-Hennigar-Haskins
Pitton-Marcinko-Haley
D: Lee-Skinner
Fraser-Wotton (C)
Hillen-MacDonald
G: Mannino
(Lawson)

Mike Sgroi tells Mike Sharp, “I think it was honestly one of the greatest fights that I’ve ever watched,” Sgroi said. “And I’m talking video, live. … That matches up with every great, classic fight I’ve ever seen.” What fight is that? This one.

(Had not seen this one again since that day. Wow. There was one that Godard had with Bonvie in Binghamton that was fantastic, and that’s what sent me looking when I found the Wilson one…)

*-It works if you say it without the ‘L’**.
**-And change the vowel a bit***.
***-Leave me alone. It’s late.

Felt kind of like the ice was tilted eastward the first two periods. But then it tilted the other way for the third. Which probably means it wasn’t tilted at all. Oh well.

When you’re wondering about whether the team might break its record for fewest shots in the live-puck era****, or whether they might escape with their fourth no-power-play game ever, you get your excitement where you can. Blocked shots aren’t bad; there were a ton of those. Sticking up for your goaltender when he’s getting run, that’s kind of admirable, too.

And then there’s Micheal Haley, finally hitting double digits in games played, throwin’ bunches of punches. And then going to the front to be there when Jason Pitton shook off the guy Haley had shaken off far more violently.

“It’s been a tough start, but the new year’s coming up here,” Haley said. “That’s hockey. You’re going to get some injuries. … All you can do is keep your head up. A game like this, you go forward.”

He played the fewest minutes of anybody on Bridgeport, but he had an effect.

“I still don’t think his conditioning level is where it needs to be right now,” Jack Capuano said. “He’s a gritty kid. He stuck up for his teammates when he had to. He played in front of the net, and he got rewarded for it, scoring a goal.”

I kind of obsessed over those shot totals tonight, but the more I think about them, the more I wonder if 17 shots is simply a product of the abject lack of special-teams play, and more importantly, special-teams shots. Hartford got no shots through on four minutes of PP time, and Bridgeport got only one in 76 seconds.

What matters to them, surely, is the only thing that matters to anybody else: two points.

****-Not quite. It’s the fewest shots in regulation since Oct. 12 at Hartford (8-6-3, then 3 OT and none in the shootout loss). It’s the fewest, period, since April 8, 2006, also home against Hartford (6-6-4), also a win. The fewest since the lockout is 14, Feb. 17, 2006, at Springfield, a 5-2 loss (4-5-5). The seven shots in the second and third tie for the fewest in back-to-back periods since the lockout, but they did take five in the first two periods, Feb. 2, 2005, at Wilkes-Barre. It appears to tie their fewest shots in the second and third combined, at least since 2004-05, because they took seven in their 11-shot game, March 20, 2005. So, long story short, not quite historic, but it’s up there: only six of their past 352 games, and maybe more, have featured fewer shots on goal.

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We are going to have to have a long talk with Matt Bertani very soon. There are things you just don’t say in a press box, and anything resembling “Boy, this game’s moving right along” is near the top of that list. (You never get things like line brawls or goalie fights with that, either; you get power failures or broken glass or fire alarms or stuff like that.) So, yeah, it’s Matt’s fault. The glass shattering in front of sections 103 and 104 reminded me of this — coincidentally, the third pane in from the high glass on the same side at the other end.

It is not all that easy changing seamless glass. Cliff Lydiksen was talking about trying to do it one night in Raleigh during a Stanley Cup Final game, and about the process dragging on for a half-hour, and about the folks on ABC grumbling. To do it in 20 minutes — sweep up the broken glass, clean the ice, lug it 200-something feet (250 pounds, Cliff said), get it into place without anyone losing a finger…It’s not plug-n-play. Doing it in about 20 minutes wasn’t bad, really.

And it’s nice to see the place hoppin’. There was already a pretty nice crowd here for warmup, and it grew to 7,097.

So apparently Yann Danis is remaining with the Islanders, albeit technically while assigned to Bridgeport. There was scuttle about a forward having to go up, but I’ve not heard who was hurt.

Prescout. The Pens cooled off the Phantoms: Bridgeport’s tied with Hershey (giving up two games in hand and the tiebreaker, of course) and six up on Philly and seven up on WBS and Binghamton.

It’s a big month for Fairfield County kids: Max Pacioretty of New Canaan could make his NHL debut Saturday night. (Fairfield County kids who went to Taft, even.)

So the United States got off to a good start in Ottawa (link is again a PDF). This tournament never really starts until the U.S. loses to plays Canada. (New Year’s Eve.)

If you like the semi-local angle, Colin Wilson’s a Greenwich native. (He did not go to Taft.) If you like the potential-future-Sound-Tigers angle, there’s Blake Kessel (USA), Jyri Niemi (FIN), Kirill Petrov (RUS) and David Ullstrom (SWE). And if you like the family-member angle, Slovakia’s assistant coach is Miroslav Marcinko, Tomas’ dad.

And RIP, Eartha Kitt.

Rick DiPietro is not only playing, but he has an assist.

He was working his tail off this morning (to the point where Yann Danis was off to the side working on his own angles). Scott Gordon said the goaltending starter was undetermined. I still didn’t believe it till I read it…

Kohn, Marcinko, Lee and Morency are the apparent scratches. Wasn’t here this morning — product Sunday — so no further word right now on Kohn. (If there is any.)

Hartford did some funky things with the lines the first time through, but the next few, the following is more or less how it looked:

LINEUPS
BRIDGEPORT
F: Smith-McLean-Iggulden
Joensuu-Walter-Colliton (A)-Joensuu
Bentivoglio-Hennigar-Packard
Pitton-Haskins-Haley
D: Skinner-Callahan (A)
Fraser-Wotton (C)
Hillen-MacDonald
G: Lawson
(Mannino)

HARTFORD
F: Dupont-Moore (A)-Stefanishion
DiDiomete-Rissmiller-Parenteau (A)
Soryal-Anisimov-Weise
Pyatt-Ouellette-Owens
D: Graham-Potter (A)
Sanguinetti-Nightingale
Denisov-Sauer
(Urquhart-apparent scratch)
G: Wiikman
(Zaba)

R: J. Smith. L: Colby, Redding.

*-We don’t tease him a lot.

Their absence this morning in Uniondale made it obvious, but Ben Walter and Joe Callahan have apparently been officially returned to Bridgeport. Mike Sillinger and Bruno Gervais are ready to go tonight for the big club.

And the World Junior Championship is on, BTW. The United States is set to get underway in a moment.

In NHL Game 6 for him, Jon Quick of Hamden gets his first shutout in LA’s 3-0 win over Columbus.

(Yes, I did say I’d be quiet. After pointing out the money troubles in Phoenix that are all over the Web, I’ll try to do so now.)