Killed off

Tonight’s game, a 4-3 shootout loss to St. John’s, simplified?

“Obviously,” Brent Thompson said, “our penalty kill was garbage tonight.”

Well, that was easy.

….

The Thompson quote could just as easily have been “our five-on-three didn’t score. Their power play did.” After that spurt a couple of weeks ago, the power play is 2-for-25 since. Tonight, that first power play looked beautiful, finally scoring on the lucky carom. The look didn’t return.

Matt Donovan pointed out the different power-play look that St. John’s uses, but he said it’s not an excuse. “We didn’t do a good job taking away passing lanes and shooting lanes,” he said. The evening dropped Bridgeport’s January penalty-kill percentage from 90.9 to 85.7.

Edit: Argh. I knew, after watching the delay on the ice, I should’ve double-checked the gamesheet, but I forgot. The second-period penalty that appeared to be Backman’s was actually Poulin’s.

The road winning streak survives. Actually, if you take the six longest true unbeaten streaks in team history, only one ended with a road loss, the 12-game-unbeaten, eight-game-winning streak in early 2001-02, which sputtered out in Portland. The 20-game unbeaten streak ended here against Michel Therrien’s Wilkes-Barre/Scranton team. The nine-game winning streak in 2001-02 ended with a home loss to Providence (“In a close, tight game, the power play could be the difference,” Steve Stirling said). A nine-game unbeaten streak early in 2002-03 ended with a 4-0 home loss to Manitoba. The eight-game unbeaten streak to end the 2003-04 regular season ended with, well, the 2003-04 regular season. (All right, if you’d like to get all technical about it, the two-season, 11-game unbeaten streak ended with Francois St. Laurent’s Friday Night Penalty Party! at Albany.) And now there’s this one.

No immediate update on Backman, who was said on Twitter to have limped off the ice.

Scott Howes signed another pro tryout after the game tonight. Blair Riley’s is up Friday.

Dylan Reese in town for the night. He’s in his all-star break already.

Jamie Palatini came on in relief to start the second period, settling things down on the public address. Jamie in the morning also noted that the first three games in this season series finished 4-3. They completed the set tonight.

Greenwich’s Cam Atkinson was voted a starter in Monday’s all-star game.

And RIP, Dick Tufeld.

Michael Fornabaio