For the first 13 minutes of this one, this was Philadelphia’s offense: two shots at the end of a Bridgeport power play 3:30 into the night, a shot and a rebound (a good rebound shot, actually).
For the next 10 minutes or so, Yann Danis could have played tiddlywinks. Bridgeport was all over Scott Munroe. Munroe held.
Then Peter Michael Ratchuk sneaks one through a couple of players and off Danis and in, and that’s how it stayed for a while. A long while. No, really, a long while.
“I’m not gonna lie to you. There was a point in the third where I thought about changing (up the lines),” Jack Capuano said. “I kept looking up at the clock and saw we were getting shots, so I kept them together.”
And, of course, here’s the funny part: When they finally beat Scott Munroe, they were kind of split up. Capuano hadn’t been thrilled with the setup on their first couple of power plays, even though they tossed a couple of shots on in their first try and three more in their second. When they finally got a third, they sent Ben Walter out in place of Iggulden for the power play to add a left-handed shot in the middle — Colliton in front, McLean making some plays. (Without Smith, it’s a whole lot of righties down low.) Colliton deflected in Andrew MacDonald’s point shot, and Bridgeport was…
Well, not on its way, but back in it.
Both goaltenders were sharp. Munroe robbed Jesse Joensuu a couple of times in tight. Danis made some crucial stops on the overtime power play.
Which set up the winner.
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Prescout; looks like a nice win for Jeff Daniels’ boys. Guess they held on tight.
Surely Jack Capuano would like me to point this out: Trevor Smith was No. 386.
As noted elsewhere, there’s a Drew Fata Rule here now. There’s a runway straight from the visitors’ room to the visitors’ bench, but after Drew got into it with one of the fans at the end of the runway, and since they’re not going to put anything up there, the team has to walk all the way around to the Zamboni door behind the visitors’ net to get to the ice. That includes trainers, coaches, everybody.
We’re out. Got to assume it’s a Miroslav Marcinko thing. (Actually, it’s a Jaroslav Janus thing. In the part I saw, the Slovak goalie was out of his gourd. But still.) So Slovakia plays Sweden again today — doesn’t look like such a bad game the first time — while Russia gets Canada.
They have NHL Network in the press box here, so I peeked at some of both games. Now, they’re showing some bit about Teemu Selanne, his rookie year and all the goals he scored. Yeesh, some of the names up there with him… Keith Tkachuk, Phil Housley, Thomas Steen…
Almost as cool as all the vintage razor-blade ads on MLB Network last night, during the Don Larsen perfect game. Awesome.