Point given

October 24 at Lowell. Nov. 9 at Philadelphia. March 21 at Worcester. Last night against the Penguins. And today against Hartford.

Each game, a 2-0 lead. And each game, a loss.

They got two point out of those five games, an overtime loss when Ryan Potulny needed overtime to complete his four-minute hat trick, and today’s. Imagine if they had gotten, say, nine points. Hey, just take seven.

Think the playoff race would look a little different right now?

Meanwhile, thank Teddy Purcell, Jack Capuano’s boy from Maine, and Brady Murray for making this day a little brighter for Bridgeport than it might otherwise have been…

BRIDGEPORT
F: Tambellini (A)-Walter-Jackman (A)
MacArthur-Mosienko-Fretter
Keith-Smith-Regier
Bentivoglio/Haskins
D: Fata-Ford
Kohn-Spiller
Fraser-Wotton (C)

HARTFORD
F: Korpikoski-Moore (A)-Parenteau
Byers-Ouellette-M.Taylor
Gratton-Anisimov-Jessiman
Fritz-(Lee-scratch)-Owens
D: Sauer-J.Taylor
Potter-Hutchinson (C)
Pock-Brown

Capuano will of course hope Teddy Purcell doesn’t have nearly that much impact on Wednesday’s game.

Binghamton started late because of a basketball game, then finished up with the rare three-minute major when ref Shaun Davis called Marc-Andre Gragnani for diving at 17:59 of the third while drawing a high-sticking major. That’s kind of hard to believe. (It was funny listening to the Amerks’ announcers try to figure out what was going on with the penalty.) Anyway, Stefan Meyer tied it up on that major (and yes, I did have to look up those first names), and then Clarke MacArthur scored in the seventh round of the shootout, and Adam Dennis stopped Lawrence Nycholat (no, I knew those first names), and the Amerks helped Bridgeport out a bit.

Albany lost and trickled farther back. And Philly, well, Philly snapped Hamilton’s 12-game winless streak.

Jean Desrochers, Justin Bourne and Keith Johnson (who got his fifth game in Saturday) were on their way back to the ECHL. And Kip Brennan is probably going up, maybe for Tuesday. It sounds as if Bruno Gervais will play Tuesday, which would allow Matthew Spiller to rest a little. Gonna do a little math with my day off tomorrow.

Walter in the past five games: three goals, five assists.

Capuano had, I thought, a wonderfully restrained quote on the second-period penalty parade.

No breaks for Tambellini on the breakaways. He said the puck kept rolling on him on the early ones, though not on the one in overtime, and he gave Wiikman props for the big glove save at the end of overtime that sent it to the shootout.

As you can see over in EastWatch, the Hershey games in hand come off the next two Wednesdays, and Binghamton’s are next Sunday and the last Wednesday. What gets tricky is if the Sound Tigers let too many points slip away here; the Bears and Senators play each other twice, and somebody’s going to get two points out of those games.

Last night Bonvie, tonight Lee. What’s with getting my hopes up?

Regier has a ritual at the end of warmup where he stands at the runway and tries to bank two shots off the penalty-box-side boards and into the Bridgeport net. His first try tonight came off softly, slid slowly toward the net… and stopped about five inches from the goal line.

Michael Fornabaio