If you don’t look around…

As was mentioned down the row from me, if this game was on television, the channel would probably get changed.

Against a lot of teams, those are just the kind of games that Bridgeport needs to play. Take tonight today. Portland. Wirtanen. Platt. Ebbett. Ryan. Miller. Offensive powerhouse. “You’ve got to watch it. They can do some nifty things with the puck,” Joey MacDonald said. “I thought we clogged up the neutral zone. We took the entry pass away.”

Clog it up. Play it ugly. Go to the net. Tambellini drove to the net. Scored once, off his own nice pass and one from Frans Nielsen. Helped disrupt things later, a play that turned into Steve Regier’s goal (53rd as a Sound Tiger, tying Rob Collins for third). “Greasy,” as Tambellini likes to call goals like that.

On this trip, they have shut down Philadelphia (a banged-up Philly, but still) and shut down a team that had lost only once in regulation in a month, and they have won both games.

It may not be pretty. Depends on what you prefer.

BRIDGEPORT
F: Tambellini (A)-Nielsen-Okposo
Smith-Walter-Regier
Bentivoglio-Colliton (A)-Keith
Brennan/Bourne
D: Fata-Ford
Kohn-Spiller (A)
Sertich-Fraser

PORTLAND
F: Miller-Ebbett-King
Ryan-Wirtanen-Platt
Bouck (C)-Dixon-Segal
Peters/Ferguson
D: Festerling-Weinrich (A)
Schneider-St. Jacques
Mikkelson-Callahan (A)

Good for another read or listen on this afternoon: “Let freedom ring”.

Bentivoglio left in the first with an apparent muscle strain that they’ll evaluate in the morning. Brennan took over most of his shifts, though it took a while to make that really apparent, because it was penalty after penalty for two periods.

Tambellini had eight shots after two periods, which had me digging. Hamilton has the team record (11, 12/14/03 vs. Utah), but no Tiger has hit double digits since Hamilton again took 10 later that season.

Justin Bourne is still slated to play in the ECHL All-Star Game with Keith Johnson. Festivities begin Tuesday night.

As seen on the Pensblog: Japers’ Rink’s NHL Public Relations Disaster Advisory.

Carolina has swapped Leighton and Grahame again.

Nice piece on Brian Leetch by John Dellapina in the News.

After three hotels in four nights and an awful lot of miles, I’m ready to get home. (And the boys have one more hotel, two more nights and even more miles behind them, so they’re probably even more ready.)

One thing I may always remember about this season: The players who opened the Sound Tigers’ training camp met Sept. 23 at a local hotel. When I got out of my car, the Giants were 0-2 and trailed Washington 17-3. When I got back in the car, they were driving for the winning score in a 24-17 game. Had any of those kids told me that, in 17 weeks, I’d be sitting in Portland watching the Giants go to the Super Bowl, I’d have written him off as insane. Incredible.

And finally: RIP, singer and songwriter John Stewart. Replacing Dave Guard in the Kingston Trio, he changed the dynamic dramatically, but the group was no less brilliant, in large part because of his songs. A great voice, silenced. (This is four posts in a row with an and-finally-RIP. Darn, how about this stops?)

Michael Fornabaio