Cooler heads would say, hey, remember last year? Comeau scores five points, Bridgeport comes back and beats a young Hartford team, and improves to 2-0, and hey, what could go wrong from there?
Opening night is no night for cooler heads, though, so hey: This team played hard. They worked. They stuck up for each other. Hartford almost found a way to take it back at the end, but the guy missed the top, and then the goalie stopped that same guy.
It’s a start.
Speaking of which, it’s nice when you can craft your story angle after one period and it holds up. Bentivoglio-Walter-Jackman got to work and banged and cycled and forced turnovers off the opening faceoff. Things ebbed and flowed from there, but the benchmark for effort had been set in the first minute.
“We’ve got a fast, skilled team,” Walter said. “We’ve got to come in and play down low, cycle the puck.”
One night down, 79 to go.
LINEUPS
BRIDGEPORT
F: Comeau-Nielsen-Tambellini (A)
Bentivoglio-Walter-Jackman (A)
Regier-Smith-Colliton
Brennan/Labelle
D: Fata-A. MacDonald
Spiller-Fraser
Kohn-Wotton (C)
HARTFORD
F: Byers (A)-Pyatt-Jessiman
Dawes (A)-Anisimov-Bourret
Korpikoski-Owens-Moore
Fritz-(Lee-scratch)-Dupont
D: Liffiton (A)-Taylor
Baranka-Potter
Kasparaitis-Sauer
From the start, it was Kohn with Spiller, and Fraser with Wotton. Capuano said they’d thought about both variations but went with this one. It will be interesting to see if Freddy Meyer makes it here. (Editing to add the link.)
Think power plays are wrong on the official box: Bridgeport’s 1-for-5, unless I’m missing something. Four in the first, then everything else is coincidental except Liffiton.
Wish you could have seen the smile when I asked Walter about coming back here. He and Bentivoglio combined for 12 points in the seven games last year against Hartford…
Including backup goalies, and based just on the order of their arrival in warmup tonight, Tim Jackman became the 200th person to wear a Sound Tigers sweater/jersey/uniform system in a game. That includes the six (until Morrison plays) goalies who only served as backups. We’re still four away from the 200th to actually play, and seven away from the 200th regular-season player.
Hartford just got their RBK Edge dealies this week, so they weren’t ready for prime time yet. They wore their last-year’s sweaters. (Straight hemlines. Who knew.) Project for this week: Gee, Mr. Brennan, what’s it like fighting a guy when he’s wearing pajamas and you’re wearing a straitjacket?
Speaking of: Anyone want to start a pool on the first time I use a Clancy Brothers lyric in reference to Kip Brennan?
New paint job around here. The blue is much lighter — in fact, it feels like the reverse of the change on the Sound Tigers’ sweaters over the past two years. And the ushers aren’t wearing purple anymore, either.
Does fog in Binghamton bring up memories? That would have been a fun night for the blog, Oct. 11, 2002 at Bingo: Kolnik gets traded, they play overtime in the fog, Bridgeport doesn’t get a shot in the last 21 and a half minutes…