Capping off

The brass was in town, and they wanted to talk afterwards, and, well, they take precedence sometimes. So two little bits that didn’t make the gamer:

–Shawn Bates’ conditioning assignment is indeed over; no extension requested. He’ll rejoin the big club.

–Pascal Morency got a cut on his hand in his fight with Jake Taylor; they think it might have been cut on a tooth, so they don’t want to stitch it up in case of infection. He probably misses the rest of the weekend, and if so, Bridgeport might play a man short, depending on whether Brennan can go.

Tracked down Jack Capuano later. Some words from him:

–On the PK: “We prescouted. We knew there were going to be seam passes. If we have sticks in the lanes, there’s no way the puck should get to Dawes.”

–“We came out flat. If you come out flat, and the other team is skating, you’re going to take penalties. … We’re not a high-powered offense right now.”

–They switched things up on the power play in the second period, moving Frans Nielsen back to the point and putting Tambellini up front, just because it wasn’t working the other way; they went back to two defensemen, too, in the third.

–The gamer is angled toward Joey MacDonald, who took on a lot of the blame. “Mac and Mo (Mike Morrison) have been there for us,” Capuano said. “We haven’t been capitalizing on the chances we have to.”

And now Albany.

BRIDGEPORT
F: Tambellini (A)-Walter-Bates
Bentivoglio-Nielsen-Regier
Comeau-Colliton-Bootland
Johnson/Morency
D: A.MacDonald-Rullier
Kohn-Spiller (A)
Fraser-Wotton (C)

HARTFORD
F: Dupont-Ouellette-Parenteau
Dawes-Anisimov-Jessiman
Byers-Korpikoski (A)-Murphy
Lee/Graham
D: Pock-Taylor (A)
Constant-Potter
Waddell-Hutchinson

Jamie Johnson feature in the Times Union. Johnson was plus-1 as the Rats shut out Lowell tonight; Ryan Bayda welcomed himself back to the AHL with two goals and an assist.

Here’s an insane Utah stat: They’ve played 14 games and allowed 55 goals; 25 of them have been on the power play, and another four were short-handed. They have been outscored by 14 goals, but 20 of 26 players rate even or a plus.

It was harder than he surely wanted it to be, but Bruce Boudreau got a win in his NHL coaching debut.

Jordan Sigalet — who’s still in the hospital — issued a statement.

Peter Abraham, Yankees writer for the Journal News, goes to a hockey game. And you have to love the choices in quotation marks involved in “three ‘stars of the game.'”

Michael Fornabaio