And in goal, No. 29…

As Katie Strang tweeted a short time ago, Rick DiPietro is coming back to Bridgeport, unless something weird happens between now and then. He should start Saturday’s home game against Springfield.

“Ricky’s looking forward to coming to Bridgeport and returning home,” Howard Saffan said.

He’ll probably play one of the road games the following weekend — the short bus ride to either Springfield or Hartford — and then the home game Tuesday, Dec. 15.

In other news, the Islanders called Andrew MacDonald back up.

Larry Brooks calls for an end to the shootout. Maybe someone’ll listen to him. (Not sure I’m so excited about his solution. Three-on-three, on the gimmick scale, may be better than the shootout, but not by much. I always leaned toward a super-old-school full 10 minutes of five-on-five. I might settle for a full 10 minutes of four-on-four, which would probably either create more tired mismatches or force teams to use more of their bench.)

If you’re curious to compare percentages from the Brooks column, 22.5 percent of AHL games (75 of 334) have gone to overtime. A bit more than half of those, 39 (11.7 percent), were decided within five minutes. The other 36 (10.8 percent) went to the bonus round. Shooters are 111-for-353 (31.4 percent), which is kind of eerily close to the NHL number. Portland and Rochester haven’t been to the shootout; Peoria has been there five times (13-for-28, three wins).

Michael Fornabaio