Soundin' Off

Rick DiPietro arrived in full Rick DiPietro style, stopping pucks, ticked off when he didn’t, returning right back to stopping them again. Shot a puck the length of the ice into the goal (all the more impressive because Scott Munroe, his attention focused on the drill going on to his right, was in that net). Even jabbed a little in the interview, which was nice to see.

The question, then, is does he go tomorrow? Well, word from the Island at about 6:15 tonight was “yes he will.” What follows is an early draft, then. The hints have broadly pointed “yes” during the week, but everyone tossed a note of caution into that today. DiPietro said he didn’t know yet. Jack Capuano said it would depend on what DiPietro and Mike Dunham told him. That might take until tomorrow’s morning skate.

At any rate, No. 29′s back in town.

No specifics yet on Reich, but Greg Moore was back in practice in his usual spot in the lineup.

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Scary stuff in Albany last night, where Adirondack’s Patrick Maroon was taken off on a stretcher after a four-on-one scrum left him knocked out on the ice; he is reportedly out of the hospital today. Nicolas Blanchard got an elbowing major for charging in from behind Maroon, the impact that put Maroon on the ground; he’s suspended indefinitely.

Pete Dougherty and Mark McGuire from our sibling paper in Albany have photos and links to a couple of YouTube videos of the incident, and here’s their coverage.

The Rats won the rematch today.

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Max Gratchev: ECHL all-star.

USA-Canada tonight, by which time I’ll hopefully be safely tucked away somewhere, avoiding the snow and ice and amateurs. Hope you all have fun.

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Farewell, then, to 2009. Weird year. I don’t know if it’s just because I’m getting older, or if the world really is getting messier, but each Dec. 31 feels more foreboding than the last. We’ll see.

We said hello to Jordan Hart, Tobias Stephan, Kris Mayotte, Jon Sim, Robin Figren, Max Gratchev, Kevin Poulin, Ryan Duncan, Mark Katic, Justin DiBenedetto, Mike Schroeder, Matt Broyles, John Tavares, Mikko Koskinen, Tony Romano, Dwayne Roloson, Scott Munroe, Jeremy Reich, Brett Westgarth, Greg Mauldin, Mark Flood, Matt Moulson, the Texas Stars, the Abbotsford Heat, Marty Biron, Bobby Hughes, Rick Cohen, Matt Martin, Jan Piskacek (sort of), Trevor Gillies, Anton Klementyev and Victor Bartley.

We said goodbye to the likes of John Sullo, Joe Franke, Brett Skinner, Michel Therrien, the Philadelphia Phantoms (and the Spectrum), Corey Witt, Kurtis McLean, Jeremy Colliton, Jamie Fraser, Peter Mannino, Jason Pitton, Chris Lee, Dennis Packard, Mike Iggulden, Joe Callahan, Dennis Packard, Andy Hilbert and Rob Hennigar, and sent Kimber Auerbach to the Show.

We said both to Junior Lessard. We said hello again and goodbye again to Wade Dubielewicz in the span of about 26 hours.

And for a few days in December and again at the end of the month here, we said hello again to Rick DiPietro. And some of us said other things to him.

We said goodbye and good luck to people like Kevyn Adams, Rob Shick, Gary Roberts, Don Koharski, Brian Kilrea, Bobby Holik, Derian Hatcher, Kenny Jonsson, Mike Sillinger, Jason Smith, Philippe Boucher, Marc Denis, Bret Hedican, Mats Sundin, Brendan Shanahan, Darren McCarty and Jeremy Roenick. For a strictly hockey version of the Doug Gilmour Memorial “I Retire No Wait I Don’t Do I?” Award, I guess you look to Sweden and Peter Forsberg and Markus Naslund, though they’re playing for fairly noble reasons; maybe exec-turned-referee Stephen Walkom. (The overall winner, clinching it in the span of about 12 hours? Urban Meyer. Which pains me, because it was going to be Floyd Mayweather, and I called that last year.)

We said hi again to Sean Avery, to Glens Falls in the AHL. And we kind of said hi to Greg Moore, but we pretty much knew him already.

The hockey world lost people like Roy Boe, Nathan Marsters, Colleen Howe, Alf Pike, Bill Davidson, Walt Poddubny, Jan MacDonald, Clint Smith, Robert Mueller, Peter Zezel, Bob Lawrence, Reggie Fleming, Herb Hammond, Ted “Teeder” Kennedy, Fred Cusick, Bill Chadwick, Abe Pollin, Whitey Piurek, George Michael and Vin DeMaio, among many others.

The Sound Tigers got themselves back in the playoffs. Elmo made it contentious. Then Wilkes-Barre/Scranton made it short-lived. (The Penguins’ power play did most of that, actually.) Tip of caps to Pittsburgh and Hershey, and to runners-up Detroit and Winnipeg. The Sound Tigers evoked the Islanders’ dynasty with the new sweaters. It’s up to them to make it look like it on the ice.

If I’ve counted right, Trevor Smith wins the annual scoring crown at 22-27-49 in 78 games. Not that far behind: Sean Bentivoglio (20-22-42 while playing all 83 games) and Jesse Joensuu (14-27-41 in 71). A quick count had Ben Walter at 33 points in the second half of last season.

Five favorite headers this year. (Bonus: Slap Shot edition.) And maybe my favorite blog post: Thanks, Dawn.

Speaking of which, we had a brand-spankin’-new blog. Even twittered some. Livechatblogs began. We’ve got a fancy-schmancy new Web site (beta). Some of it even made sense in the moment.

However we communicated, hope you enjoyed it, or at least were informed a little at times. Let’s hope 2010 is even better. Happy and healthy to you and yours.

The Katic/No. 71 question in the post earlier today drew this from a certain reader going by “Jason C.”:

Straying off topic slightly, Katic will be the third player ever to wear #71 in the AHL All-Star Game… The other two are a former Sound Tiger (although he didn’t wear 71 in Bridgeport) and a former Hartford Whaler.

Have at it in the comments there.

No additional Sound Tigers on the PlanetUSA team. By the numbers, not a stunner. None of Bridgeport’s top-three eligible forwards has 20 points, which is the lowest total for a PUSA forward, and even those three are Gerbe (voted a starter with some NHL time holding the numbers down), Mink (captain) and Fritsche (Syracuse’s lone pick).

Conceivable, of course, that one might be an injury replacement if everything falls right for them in the next three weeks.

No Connecticut natives. For Hartford, Bobby Sanguinetti joins Corey Locke, though they’ll face each other. Patrick Rissmiller represents Grand Rapids.

Edit: Victor Bartley was picked for the ECHL’s National Conference All-Star team, as were Ryan Kinasewich (voted a starter) and A.J. Perry. Defenseman Brendan Milnamow of Wilton is also on the team, representing Idaho as a rookie.

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Bonus trivia: Mark Katic may get to wear his number at the All-Star Game, even though he’s a rookie: No one else in the AHL wears No. 71. But he’s the fourth Sound Tiger to have worn it in the past four seasons. Remember the other three? (I’d already forgotten two. Embarrassing.)

I’ll toss up answers to the weekend’s quiz sometime tonight or tomorrow. Edit: like this, maybe.

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Randomly noted balance: Manchester has the seventh-most goals in the league… and doesn’t have a skater with more than 20 points.

A few of these were covered in yesterday’s chat, but here goes, anyway:

We should know more specifics on Jeremy Reich by tomorrow. Doesn’t look good, though. Greg Moore sat out his second day in a row of practice today, under the weather.

Chris Botta has an impeccable source telling him Kirill Petrov isn’t coming to America this year. Meanwhile, Anton sighting (literally). He was, though, a minus-1 in Tuesday’s loss to Sweden. The United States and Canada play Friday for one bye.

Brief BST goalie Tobias Stephan was one of three goalies named to the Swiss Olympic team. He joins Mark Streit and Hartford’s Andres Ambuhl. Former Beast of New Haven forward Herberts Vasiljevs is on Latvia’s roster; maybe he’ll see the Czech Republic’s Filip Kuba there. Former Rangers/Wolf Pack centerman Jarkko Immonen made Finland’s roster; former Packer John Tripp is one of the more-familiar names for Germany.

Kurtis McLean scored, but Canada’s out of the Spengler Cup, anyway.

Dan Tepfer has an OMG moment with Chase customer service.

Interesting point out of Variety on Marginal Revolution.

And RIP, Percy Sutton.

Practice is later than usual Tuesday, so we’ll start up the weekly chat (yep, should be weekly from now on) around 3:30. Edit: We could maybe talk about Mark Katic, Canadian AHL All-Star.

Edit2: We’re in computer transition, as you may have noticed… I’m gonna give this a whirl anyway, but we’ll see what happens.

Katie Strang reports behind a pay wall (well, tweets, too) that Rick DiPietro is expected to come back for a game with the Sound Tigers this weekend.

More later

Edit: Answers are now here, after you’ve played.

Just like last year at this time, the paper broke out a Pop Quiz for the readers again this year. It’s in today’s paper. I sent in a couple of questions:

Sesame Street Live had booked the Arena at Harbor Yard for mid-April, so the Bridgeport Sound Tigers had to go elsewhere for their first home playoff games in three years. Where did those two games wind up?

(A) Binghamton Senators
(B) Hartford Wolf Pack
(C) Hershey Bears
(D) Wilkes-Barre/Scranton Penguins

Geared more toward the casual reader, of course. The ol’ My-Mom’s-Got-A-Shot questions.

Yours may be a little tougher.

(1) The Sound Tigers set a league record this year (belatedly noted; thanks for checking, Jason Chaimovitch): most consecutive home playoff losses. (Yes, those off-site games count.) How many in a row has Bridgeport lost?

(2) Mark Wotton took over second place on the team’s games-played list this fall; he has played 255.
 (a) Whose record is he chasing, a mark he’ll break if he plays 71 games?
 (b) Who are the other three Sound Tigers with 200-plus games played for this team?
 (c) Who are the three current Sound Tigers who can reach 200 Bridgeport games played this year?

(3) The Sound Tigers clinched a playoff berth on March 31 at Albany.
 (a) Whose hat trick, his first as a professional, paced the victory?
 (b) What future Sound Tiger scored the River Rats’ first goal that night?
 (c) What was significant about that game’s scheduling?

(4) Len DiCostanzo backed up a few times for the Sound Tigers. He finally did get into an AHL game with someone else. Which team?

(5) Which of these players did not wear an alternate captain’s ‘A’ in 2009?
 (a) Mitch Fritz
 (b) Jon Sim
 (c) Pascal Morency
 (d) Kurtis McLean
 (e) Chris Lee

(6) Jack Capuano had a couple of near-mantras in his press scrums this calendar year. We really could have written them in before we started.
  (6A) What was last season’s?
   (a) We skate harder
   (b) We never quit
   (c) Our work ethic beats talent
   (d) We battled
  (6B) What was it early this season?
   (a) I can see the progress every night
   (b) I can’t believe this team won’t succeed
   (c) I can’t fault the effort
   (d) We battled

(7) Mike Iggulden was scheduled to take part in the accuracy contest at the AHL All-Star Game in Worcester. Who thought he heard his name announced, took Iggulden’s turn, and won the event?

(8) Of the teams who are on Bridgeport’s 2008-09 and 2009-10 schedules, which is the only one that they did not face in 2009?

(9) March 28 in Hershey, second-to-last game between the teams.
 (a) Who hit Jeremy Colliton up high, knocking him out until Game 4 of the playoffs?
 (b) Who immediately went to fight that player?
 (c) Alex Giroux scored two of Hershey’s seven goals. Why were they significant?
 (d) Why’d Dan Sernoffsky cover that game for us?

(10) April 3 vs. Hershey, last game between the teams.
  (a) Who scored in overtime?
  (b) Whose diving block on Oskar Osala’s wide-open shot prompted Peter Mannino to say that “Superman came out of nowhere”?

(11) Coming to the Atlantic Division offers the Sound Tigers opportunities to build rivalries with local teams. Think back to one that had some juice in earlier days…
  (a) Bridgeport has played only one current Atlantic Division team in the playoffs. Which one?
  (b) Who played goal for Bridgeport in that series?
  (c) I’d forgotten just how many there were, but that opponent’s roster at the start of the series featured three former Sound Tigers and (to date, at least) four future Sound Tigers. (Two of the former Sound Tigers did not play in the playoffs, and for one of them, that was a familiar predicament.) Name as many as you can.
  (d) What was the head-coaching matchup?
  (e) With which team had those two coaches worked together only a few years earlier?
  (f) What was the final result of that series?
  (g) What’d I pick?

(12) Match the departed Sound Tiger to his current team.

(13) A what? Mitch Fritz picked up an unusual major penalty on Feb. 28 against Wilkes-Barre/Scranton. What was the call, and who was Fritz alleged to have fouled?

(14) A what? Jerome Samson of Albany picked up a different unusual major penalty from Francois St. Laurent in the second period of a game April 5. Which unusual major was it? That was supposed to be one of the questions. Oops. Give yourself a bonus point if you remembered it was a spear.
  (a) Who was Samson alleged to have fouled?
  (b) On top of the tripping penalty St. Laurent gave Samson at the same time (which, you’ll recall, gets served after the major), how many other minor penalties did St. Laurent hand Albany during that major?
  (c) Who was the other person ejected from that game?
  (d) The Sound Tigers tied a team record with five power-play goals in that game. How many were scored during Samson’s major?

(15) Bridgeport’s record for calendar-year 2009 was a pretty-good 47-28-3-5, a .614 points percentage. Thanks to seven shootout wins, that’s the most wins the Sound Tigers have had in a calendar year. Even with the shootout help, though, that’s not the best points percentage in team history (third, actually). What calendar year was Bridgeport’s best?

I may hold comments for a day or two. Answers are now here. Have fun.

Can’t believe the backdating and below-the-folding worked on the first try. Between this and the liveblogchat that didn’t go all Hamster Huey, I’m starting to think our Web system actually works.

Anyway, the questions sent for the paper were assumed to be somewhat easier for the regulars here, what with the Nassau Coliseum visit (thanks for everything, Elmo), where they lost twice to Wilkes-Barre/Scranton. That led directly into the first question, a remarkable league record…

CLICK ON FOR ANSWERS

(more…)

Mattias Weinhandl was named to Sweden’s Olympic roster.

A little Sunday reading, if you hadn’t seen it already: Joe Posnanski’s 5,000 Words on Strat-o-Matic.

Mike Vaccaro on the end of Giants Stadium. He’s right. You think of Giants Stadium, you think cold and wind and vicious defenses taking advantage. The facility itself? I dunno. I never saw a game there — only been to Brendan Byrne twice, actually, for my only Meadowlands visits — and that doesn’t really kill me. (Meanwhile, the home team is closing the place in fine fashion, huh?)

Optional today; sounds like only workouts tomorrow.

Locke, Parenteau and Byers, one of the more dangerous combos in the AHL: a combined 1-2-3.

Yeah, Locke tied the game in the final two minutes, but the trio combined for seven shots, and Byers had three of them.

“Parenteau and Locke are two of the best players in the league,” said Matt Martin, who started periods against them with Tyler Haskins and Sean Bentivoglio and Dustin Kohn and Mark Flood. “To limit their time and space, that’s what we’ve got to do.”

Lawson controlled everything, even if he didn’t make the highlight-reel saves like his counterpart did (more in a second). They played a good game and pulled out the bonus round.

Hey, take another week off.

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Stephen Valiquette, the first Sound Tigers goalie to face a penalty shot, becomes the first former Sound Tigers goalie to face a Sound Tigers penalty shot. He had another good night; stopping Greg Moore on the breakway (with Nigel Williams on Moore’s tail) was one of those highlight-reel saves.

And while Jack Capuano has absolutely no reason to feel kinship with Steve Valiquette, who’s only been out of here for six and a half years, it was still funny to hear Valiquette called “the guy at the other end” in seriousness.

Mark Katic left the ice for a few minutes with his arm hanging. He said he’s had trouble in the past with that shoulder, and that all the rehab and work he has done to strengthen that shoulder probably helped save him from worse injury. He was back on a regular shift for the third.

Mikko Koskinen said he’s making good progress in his rehab; everything’s feeling good.

After the game, the room was full of kids accepting Christmas gifts from the players. They were from Kids in Crisis, an organization that supports kids dealing with any kind of family crisis. Brett Westgarth was at the front of the effort to get them in, Luke Milbury said.

Gerry Cantlon said that indeed Dale Weise arrived about 15 minutes before the game, suited up and got busy.

Only one ref working at the start of the Rangers-Islanders game, which produced the Tweet of the Night.

Springfield rolls on… in the wrong direction. That’s 14 without a win.

Jonathan follows up his fights of the decade with his knockouts of the decade. A couple are very familiar. Indelible, even.

The World Junior is on. The U.S. started OK. Matt Donovan scored a goal. Every time I see Jerry D’Amigo’s name, I think back to when he was one of the kiddie competitors at the All-Star Game in Binghamton. Anton Klementyev was plus-1 for Russia; Kirill Petrov, his fellow hostage, had a goal and two assists. Sweden annihilated the Czechs. And honestly, on reputations, that one shocks me more than the crazy 16-0 thing that Canada and Latvia had. (Warning: Of those links, the first will refresh itself and take over your screen every time; the other three are PDFs.) The Americans play the Swiss on Sunday afternoon (schedule); Russia next plays Monday.

Hokey smokes. (Didn’t Matt Sather say that 10-0 opening-night win wasn’t really a 10-0 game, too? So that’s 19-1 of not-really.)

Mike Sgroi joined Elmira.

Uni Watch links up the evolution of the Hartford Whalers’ logo, which is pretty darned neat.

This photo took my breath away. (H/T: This Is True)

Heh heh.

(The problem with blogging from home is that I always go look for one more link. And then it’s a quarter to two. OK.)

And RIP, sportscaster George Michael, onetime Islanders broadcaster, who was also a top DJ in the day.

Mic didn’t work for the lady set to sing the anthem. After a minute or two, the song came floating up from around section 102… and then everyone joined in. Pretty sweet.

Quickie lineups – fighting with the computer and a dialup connection:
BPT
Smith-Moore-Sixsmith
DiBenedetto-Mauldin-Joensuu (back from Island)
Bentivoglio-Haskins-Martin
Haley-Morency-Figren
Kohn-Flood
Katic-Gleed
Bartley-Wotton
Lawson
Munroe

HFD
Byers-Locke-Parenteau
Grachev-Dupont-Weise (a late add? Saw Nightingale w/Couture in this spot)
Ambhul-Crowder-Couture
DiDiomete-Garlock-Hoffman
Heikkinen-Sanguinetti
Williams-Potter
Urquhart-Sauer
Valiquette
Zaba

Binda/Colby, Wahl

Reich (shoulder) is said to be out for a while.

No locals on the U.S. junior national team, unless you count Tim Taylor. But there is Islanders draft pick Matt Donovan.

Jonathan presents his Top 10 AHL fights of the decade. After the fight that he puts at No. 2, I’d gone looking for a Godard-Bonvie tilt that was pretty good (though not up to Top 10 standards): wasn’t there last year, but it’s there now.

Yeah, I always wondered, too.

We’ll make it a Christmas tradition if he will: A true Christmas story from Richard C. Thompson. And Habs Inside/Out posted this last year at this time, so why not see it again: Hockey Homicide.

The Big Club plays its last game before the break tonight. If nothing earth-shattering comes out of that to affect Bridgeport, we’ll see ya Saturday. If it’s your bag, Merry Christmas. If not, have a nice coupla days.

Word is Micheal Haley won’t be suspended further for his match penalty Saturday night. He served his one-game suspension Sunday.