Great game to watch. Back and forth. Scoring chances galore. Some turnovers leading to goals, and yeah, Capuano wasn’t thrilled about how some of those five came to be.
Capuano also talked about needing secondary scoring; Smith and Iggulden and McLean can’t do it every night, and when you’re giving five to Wilkes-Barre, they can’t do it alone. The first of the year for both Brett Skinner and Jason Pitton is a start, but there are a lot of other guys on this team with a lot of zeroes on a lot of nights.
They’ll have a long week of practice to work on tightening it up, then come back in the new year with a six-point cushion on a playoff spot.
LINEUPS
BRIDGEPORT
F: Smith-McLean (‘A’)-Iggulden
Bentivoglio-Walter (‘A’)-Joensuu
Packard-Hennigar-Haskins
Pitton-Marcinko-Haley
D: Lee-Skinner
Fraser-Wotton (C)
Hillen-MacDonald
G: Mannino
(Lawson)
WILKES-BARRE/SCRANTON
F: James (A)-Thomas-Caputi
Pesonen-Letestu-Johnson
Goebel-Henrich-Boogaard
Minard-Taffe-Stone (A)
(Daoust-scratch)
D: Cote-Engelland (A)
Mormina-Lovejoy
Cashman-D’Aversa
G: Curry
(Berkhoel)
R: Cozzan. L: Pomento, McNulty.
Remember when Callahan blocked that shot early in Friday night’s game? Do you remember whose shot it was? ‘Cause I wrote down that Callahan blocked Callahan, which I’m, um, pretty sure is wrong. Anyway, that’s why he stayed home: That was hurting. Capuano said he’s day-to-day, as is Dustin Kohn, who’s still feeling it from the Jeremy Yablonski hit last weekend.
Packard again took on Colliton’s penalty-kill time. In the first, rather than use a fourth penalty-kill forward with Jason Pitton in the box, Bridgeport had Kurtis McLean kill the entire minor penalty.
And had Packard scored in the second period instead of hitting the post, Jonathan and I might have had our stories written. Packard grew up around the corner from here.
Tim Wallace was called up to Pittsburgh, but blog regular Danny Richmond was out sick.
“2, N.Y. Islanders, Tambellini 1 (Streit, Bailey), 9:38.” Is that the Hallelujah Chorus? (Looks like some kind of ending, too.)
Kip Brennan played his first game tonight. No penalties (for him — there’s a coach’s-obscenity penalty in there, though), but a minus-1. And Drew Fata scored again.
Jonathan pointed out this Philly story, which speculates Springfield as a possible destination for the Flyers’ kids next year, as well as “(ruling) out Atlantic City, Trenton and the Wachovia Center.”
The first question here is probably closer to being germane for a sports-related blog, but I was more interested in the second.
This is Post 1000 on the blog on this server. Wow. (There are a few hundred on the Lifeboat. Should count those sometime.)
So that’s it for games in calendar-year 2008. Overall record this trip around the sun: 45-29-1-5, 96 points. That sounds pretty good, and it gets you in the playoffs every year, but interestingly, it doesn’t get you home ice in the shootout era. Oh well.
We’ll wrap up the year a little more properly when it gets closer to actually ending.