Portland had nine players in the lineup with 30 or more points; Bridgeport had three. The goal scorers are Joe Tallari and, you could feel it coming, Mark Lee. Great job by them. Sure, mistakes were made, but this Portland team is downright terrifying when it’s on and skating, and after a nutty refereeing night Saturday night — “Big B, Big O, Big B, Mr. Bob” — against Lowell that still had people buzzing Sunday, Portland was motivated.
Terrifying. I joked tonight that this Portland team would beat Pittsburgh. I don’t necessarily believe it, but I’m not sure I doubt it, either.
LINEUPS
BRIDGEPORT
F: Marjamaki-Koalska-Collins (A)
Masse-O’Marra-Miles
Tunik-Tsimikalis-Tallari
Lee/Christensen
D: Pettinen-Jarrett (A)
Kemp-Caldwell
Barr-Pratt
PORTLAND
F: Penner-Konopka (A)-Shannon
Peters (A)-Gavey (C)-Ferguson
Glencross-Bittner-Parenteau
Pohanka-Stapleton-(Auffrey-scratch)
D: O’Brien-Rome
Huskins-Kondratiev
Smid-St. Jacques
Dubielewicz, tying his own team record with a 10th consecutive start, was incredible in the third. There were a couple of crazy rebound saves, including one where he went right-to-left and just threw his left arm out to get Curtis Glencross’ rebound shot.
Dodging a bullet: The Sound Tigers skaters’ record for games into the season without a point is Graham Belak, 26, in 2002-03. Mark Lee got it in Game 25, and he did it with a goal.
There was apparently a good shouting match in the hallway after the game tonight. Not entirely sure what about. Nowhere near as good as a goalie fight, though, and Jonathan from Wilkes-Barre gives us the blow-by-blow on all the fun stuff that was going on while we were at the CCCC. (Jonathan also ran the championship round of Quiz for the Cup this week.)
Tonight’s was the Sound Tigers’ 14th empty-net goal against. That’s 14 losses in which it was close enough at the end to try for a boost in offense… but have that luck go the other way. (I think they clinched the league lead in that…)
So the picture clears slightly: With Bridgeport’s loss, Norfolk is third and gets Hershey. The Sound Tigers still need two points up or down, no matter what, to take the fourth spot and go to WBS. Were Bingo to go 3-0-1 or 4-0 in its final four — that would be either 16-4-2-1 or 17-4-1-1 in its last 23, remember — that would force the Sound Tigers to gain one or two points, respectively, in their final regular-season two at WBS and Hartford.
Hartford clinched home ice in the first round by getting to overtime against Lowell, then Marvin Degon made it better with the game-winner.
Grand Rapids could have secured first overall with a point tonight, but the Griffins lost to Rochester. And that Iowa-Omaha-Chicago mess got tighter; three points separate the Stars from the other two. The Wolves have played one more game, though. (Wonder what the double gross misconduct on the Chicago bench was about today after the Wolves won?) After the usual dark Monday, Chicago visits Iowa, and Omaha visits Houston on Tuesday. (BTW, wrong from yesterday: Iowa’s long since locked up the season series with Chicago, and the Wolves can’t finish with more wins, so a tie goes to Iowa: the Stars’ magic number against Chicago is three, and it’s five against Omaha.)
(I’m into that race now. Weird.)
If the name Nathan Marsters rings a bell, he’s the kid who attended a New York Islanders rookie camp last summer with several of the Sound Tigers. He made 26 saves for his 22nd win.
Something I meant to mention Saturday is that Bridgeport finally passed last year’s total of penalty kills, 451, that evening. It’s remarkable for a couple of reasons: First, the obstruction crackdown, which has power plays up about 18 percent from last year; and two, the team’s lack of discipline early in the season. That it took this long to top the number shows they’ve gotten better at avoiding penalties, and it also shows just how absurdly many penalties last year’s team took…
And another thing: Not even counting the seven games players have missed with illnesses this year, Bridgeport has a new standard for man-games lost to injury. Tonight’s six bring the total to 345. Last year, even including Graham Belak’s month on the shelf with that virulent infection, the team lost 341 man-games to injury and illness. All props to trainer John Sullo, who’s had to deal with all this…
In an interview on the video board between the first and second periods, ex-Tigers goalie Dieter Kochan said he’d get the cast off his broken ankle Monday.
And then between the second and third, Zack Maroon from Scarborough (Greg Cronin’s hometown), on his 10th birthday, won the Score-o. He drove one from about 40 feet into the middle hole, and it sounded like he won a cruise.
This was a weird day. Driving up this morning, at about 10:20, somewhere in Wallingford, I had one of those great moments: Suddenly wondering to myself, “Wait, where am I going?” A stop at Tim Hortons helped clear that up.
Coming home tonight, WLNG’s syndicated Beatles show was playing selections from the new Volume 2 of the Capitol albums CDs. Darn, those songs sound good. They played the stereo version of Please Please Me, the one where George flubs the riff and then they flub the line at the end and John almost laughs… had it cranked up so loud you probably heard me from Vernon. (Sorry.)
Interesting beginning to the Simpsons tonight. Lisa, 8, knew from Mac Tonight, but Bart, 10, had no idea what MacGyver was… though it helped him save his Aunt Selma once. (I know, I know: A wizard did it.)
And I’m gratified to see the early response to the Fake Team Awards. You’ve got till Friday. As for the Seventh Player, Andy mentioned he thought it was voted on by the team… You may be right, but I thought I remembered it as an organizational thing. I’m positive about the above-expectations criteria, which doesn’t sound like the usual player-voted, player’s player, normal-“seventh player” thing. I’ll poke around on that. There’s at least a couple of people around who might remember.