James Sixsmith looks at it with fresh eyes, I guess, but he made a good point after this win: Since he got here Dec. 30, he didn’t think the third line or fourth line had scored at all.
He’s wrong. Dead wrong.
When Andrew MacDonald scored Saturday, he was on with Bentivoglio, Packard and Nikiforov, a mix of what was the third and fourth that night.
And… OK, he’s not wrong. Not dead wrong at all.
Since he got here, that’s it. They had scored 19 goals (including Iggulden’s tonight, and the scoring — Marcinko’s dump, Joensuu’s retrieval, Iggulden’s streaking in — reflects the bridge of the change on the fly), and that was the only one for which a preponderance of third- or fourth-liners was on the ice.
You talk about secondary scoring. and, yeah, 1-for-19 isn’t much.
(By coincidence, the three previous games included goals by Marcinko, Haley and Pitton. But anyway.)
Took a somewhat random sample — where the cursor stopped when I let up on the down-arrow — and checked Nov. 16-Dec. 6, and got only three of 26 goals not scored by the top two lines or on a power play; even that is skewed a bit, because Ben Walter was coming back in part of that stretch and wasn’t playing top-two consistently, and Mike Sillinger was in, too.
It’s a common thread, but, yeah, 1-for-19. So tonight, with Sixsmith scoring on a nice play, and with Pitton ripping off his second top-shelf shorty in a month, was a bit of a change.
The third line, Sixsmith with Tyler Haskins and Vladimir Nikiforov, has become a Capuano favorite. He has gone back to it a few times the past couple of weeks.
“Energy. Speed. Hockey sense,” he said. “I thought, at times, in practice and a few other games, they didn’t manage the puck very well. (Wednesday), they kept the puck deep. They played against some top players, and they handled it well.”
Sixsmith — glad to get off the schneid before he finished his 10th game — likes playing with them.
“With all three of us, our game is speed. We’ve got to move our feet,” Sixsmith said. “If we’re standing still, we’re no good.”
Oh: Sixsmith’s point was that, if the third and fourth lines get going, this team is dangerous.
Maybe it’s a bit obvious — if the guys you don’t expect to score go out and score, you’re scoring more than expected and are, yeah, more likely to score more than the other guys — but a good point nonetheless.
Both lines were effective tonight even when not scoring. Fritz and Packard and Pitton did a nice job getting pucks in and out. Albany’s second goal came against the thirds, but it began with something good for Bridgeport: Nikiforov blocked a Bryan Rodney shot. Nikiforov couldn’t find the puck, Rodney got past him and stepped up into the left circle, and scored. Trouble until Haskins chips the puck ahead and Pitton scores.