Nathan Lawson just keeps rolling.
OK, he was saying as usual, his defense made things easy on him. They kept shots to the outside. OK.
Now check out that Anisimov breakaway early in the second period that Lawson gloved. Anisimov had gone glove-side to beat him Dec.26. Anisimov had gone glove-side earlier in the game. Lawson beat him there again this time.
Then there was that mad scramble late in the second, capping a few minutes where the Wolf Pack were really starting to come on and could have tied the game. The puck goes left. The puck goes back. The puck goes right. They throw it into the crease, through the crease, around the crease, and Lawson and the defense somehow shut the door. “To tell you the truth,” he said, “I had no idea where the puck really was.
“The forwards and the (defensemen) collapsed and did their jobs,” he added later. “That’s why the puck stayed out.”
Nothing to do with the guy whose GAA is down to 1.62, and whose SP is up to .944. The only thing he’d take credit for was Anisimov’s goal at the right post. “The goal was my fault. I let the team down there.”
Please take our word for it when we tell you the kid’s pretty colorful when he’s not talking about his victories.
—
As a comeback win after Friday in Providence, this was a good one for Bridgeport, Jack Capuano said.
“We were just looking at little things: shooting lanes, getting pucks deep. Some work on the power play, the penalty kill, the forecheck, getting above the puck. We had a lot of guys pay the price tonight. They kept us in the game.”
The penalty kill included Sean Bentivoglio and Ben Walter, and Trevor Smith saw some time there, too.
“We’ve got to get more guys in there. Tomas is going to get more time,” Capuano said, referring to Marcinko, who was killing penalties a bit early in the season. ” We’re going to get Smitty involved.”
It’s not necessarily that they’ll then use a deeper rotation, he said — it’s pretty much been four forwards a night, almost every game this year — but using different guys would give a break to players like Kurtis McLean, who has been in on almost every penalty kill, is a first-unit power-play guy and, oh yeah, centers the top line, too.
—
Hope to get you some Smith stuff in Monday’s paper. We were very early tonight because of weather worries (that it was the Sunday paper, too, probably didn’t help, had I to guess). I swiped the answer to one of Dave’s on-ice questions to have just one quote in the paper. Thanks, Dave!
—
Micheal Haley had his right hand wrapped up as he walked out, which doesn’t look great, but there’s no official word on what or how bad it is.
A somewhat disheartened Jack Hillen noted that that was his first fight ever. Ever, period. “Didn’t it look like it?” he asked. We weren’t going to say anything. But it’s one.
Bridgeport’s power play this season has not yet gone more than 13 chances in a row without scoring. Smith’s goal snapped an 0-for-8.
The Sound Tigers picked up points on everyone except Binghamton. WBS lost in a shootout, and Hershey and Philly lost in regulation.
Prescout. Oh, wait….
Scott Gordon in the house.
Not a bad crowd at all, all things considered, though dampened quite a bit because of the weather. Second time in a row that a scheduled high school game here has been postponed, too. Unfortunate. Would really liked to have seen both games.
Loved Botta’s last graph there. (Also had to like seeing “Nielsen” again.)
No points for Ray Giroux in the KHL All-Star Game. More proof: Democracy simply doesn’t work.*
I don’t really have the technical know-how to deal with this, but it still blows my mind, if you follow some of those chains of words. Awesome.
Neil Best has video of a young Steve Somers.
We’ve referenced the song related to this story before, so here’s a capper to it. (Hat tip: former WBS beat writer Kelly Tomlinson.)
*-2F11.