*-It works if you say it without the ‘L’**.
**-And change the vowel a bit***.
***-Leave me alone. It’s late.
Felt kind of like the ice was tilted eastward the first two periods. But then it tilted the other way for the third. Which probably means it wasn’t tilted at all. Oh well.
When you’re wondering about whether the team might break its record for fewest shots in the live-puck era****, or whether they might escape with their fourth no-power-play game ever, you get your excitement where you can. Blocked shots aren’t bad; there were a ton of those. Sticking up for your goaltender when he’s getting run, that’s kind of admirable, too.
And then there’s Micheal Haley, finally hitting double digits in games played, throwin’ bunches of punches. And then going to the front to be there when Jason Pitton shook off the guy Haley had shaken off far more violently.
“It’s been a tough start, but the new year’s coming up here,” Haley said. “That’s hockey. You’re going to get some injuries. … All you can do is keep your head up. A game like this, you go forward.”
He played the fewest minutes of anybody on Bridgeport, but he had an effect.
“I still don’t think his conditioning level is where it needs to be right now,” Jack Capuano said. “He’s a gritty kid. He stuck up for his teammates when he had to. He played in front of the net, and he got rewarded for it, scoring a goal.”
I kind of obsessed over those shot totals tonight, but the more I think about them, the more I wonder if 17 shots is simply a product of the abject lack of special-teams play, and more importantly, special-teams shots. Hartford got no shots through on four minutes of PP time, and Bridgeport got only one in 76 seconds.
What matters to them, surely, is the only thing that matters to anybody else: two points.
****-Not quite. It’s the fewest shots in regulation since Oct. 12 at Hartford (8-6-3, then 3 OT and none in the shootout loss). It’s the fewest, period, since April 8, 2006, also home against Hartford (6-6-4), also a win. The fewest since the lockout is 14, Feb. 17, 2006, at Springfield, a 5-2 loss (4-5-5). The seven shots in the second and third tie for the fewest in back-to-back periods since the lockout, but they did take five in the first two periods, Feb. 2, 2005, at Wilkes-Barre. It appears to tie their fewest shots in the second and third combined, at least since 2004-05, because they took seven in their 11-shot game, March 20, 2005. So, long story short, not quite historic, but it’s up there: only six of their past 352 games, and maybe more, have featured fewer shots on goal.
—-
We are going to have to have a long talk with Matt Bertani very soon. There are things you just don’t say in a press box, and anything resembling “Boy, this game’s moving right along” is near the top of that list. (You never get things like line brawls or goalie fights with that, either; you get power failures or broken glass or fire alarms or stuff like that.) So, yeah, it’s Matt’s fault. The glass shattering in front of sections 103 and 104 reminded me of this — coincidentally, the third pane in from the high glass on the same side at the other end.
It is not all that easy changing seamless glass. Cliff Lydiksen was talking about trying to do it one night in Raleigh during a Stanley Cup Final game, and about the process dragging on for a half-hour, and about the folks on ABC grumbling. To do it in 20 minutes — sweep up the broken glass, clean the ice, lug it 200-something feet (250 pounds, Cliff said), get it into place without anyone losing a finger…It’s not plug-n-play. Doing it in about 20 minutes wasn’t bad, really.
And it’s nice to see the place hoppin’. There was already a pretty nice crowd here for warmup, and it grew to 7,097.
So apparently Yann Danis is remaining with the Islanders, albeit technically while assigned to Bridgeport. There was scuttle about a forward having to go up, but I’ve not heard who was hurt.
Prescout. The Pens cooled off the Phantoms: Bridgeport’s tied with Hershey (giving up two games in hand and the tiebreaker, of course) and six up on Philly and seven up on WBS and Binghamton.
It’s a big month for Fairfield County kids: Max Pacioretty of New Canaan could make his NHL debut Saturday night. (Fairfield County kids who went to Taft, even.)
So the United States got off to a good start in Ottawa (link is again a PDF). This tournament never really starts until the U.S. loses to plays Canada. (New Year’s Eve.)
If you like the semi-local angle, Colin Wilson’s a Greenwich native. (He did not go to Taft.) If you like the potential-future-Sound-Tigers angle, there’s Blake Kessel (USA), Jyri Niemi (FIN), Kirill Petrov (RUS) and David Ullstrom (SWE). And if you like the family-member angle, Slovakia’s assistant coach is Miroslav Marcinko, Tomas’ dad.
And RIP, Eartha Kitt.