Soundin' Off

They made him work, Worcester did. He was up to most of it. What beat him, it’s not like it beat him because he had to move. One was a giveaway, a good shot through a screen. One was a turnover, a deflection. One went off his stick and rolled toward the net. One was a backhanded wraparound that caught him in-between.

They weren’t the goals of a guy in pain. They were the goals of a guy who has barely played since the Bush Administration.

“We’re happy with his progress,” Mike Dunham said. “That’s the important thing. He got to play some minutes and get into the game mentality.”

And that’s something both Dunham and Sudsie Maharaj have talked about: how practice is so much different from a game.

“It’s the fact that you have to make the save,” Dunham said. “That focus, the mentality, to follow the puck all the time.”

He looked like himself. He got out to get the puck. He was dying for Sean Bentivoglio to give him the back pass on the penalty kill, the old Tomi Pettinen play, but it instead got turned over into a goal.

“He definitely played the puck pretty well,” Jack Capuano said. “I liked the way he was moving.”

He faced lots of shots and lots of good shots.

“They’re a good puck-possession team,” DiPietro said. “They spent a lot of time in our zone. That was good for me.”

So Rick DiPietro is now fifth in all-time goals-against average among Bridgeport goalies with 10 or more games (2.27). In 99 games, he’s 47-36-15.

At first blush, it doesn’t look like he’ll be adding to those totals anytime soon.

“Like I said,” DiPietro said, “I’m disappointed that we lost.”

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Lines in the third, mostly: Bentivoglio-Haley-Martin; DiBenedetto-Moore-Sixsmith; Smith-Mauldin-Joensuu; DiBenedetto-Morency-Figren. Haskins’ injury was thought to be a bruise. Bartley stuck with Flood after an early-third power play, reuniting Wotton and Gleed and leaving Kohn with Katic.

For Sixsmith, it appears to be his fourth or fifth pro fight, depending on definitions, according to HockeyFights.com. Edit: See comments.

Figren gets a goal, coming from the right corner to the front of the net. “He kept his feet moving and he took it to the net,” Capuano said. “You take it to the paint area, that’s the toughest area to defend.”

Edit: Belatedly noticed an interesting DiPietro stat: Precisely one no-decision as a Sound Tiger, that first rehab start. He made only one relief appearance here, coming into a tie game –Jan. 26, 2002, after Worcester rallied from 5-1 down — and got the decision.
Gonna hit the road here, see what we find weather-wise. Edit: What we found was lotsa snow on I-84. Yikes. The U.S. plays a bit later at the WJC. No practice tomorrow.