Francois St. Laurent’s Friday Night Penalty Party! (seven years later)

(Not really anything to worry about. Rampant nostalgia. Thinking too hard. Click on if you care dare.)

It might not be one of the odder games I’ve ever seen, but it’s one of the more amazing box scores.

Bridgeport, 3-0, goes to Albany and finds waiting for it one Francois St. Laurent, who that March handed the Sound Tigers 12 power plays at home against Hartford (then tying the team record, since ecliped).

But then came this, and while I’ve referred to it several times and threatened to do this more than once, it had never been done on the blog until now.

Oct. 22, 2004, at Albany:

Some thoughts:

–From the paper the next day: SOUND BITE — “It can go both ways, you can say the refereeing was a little poor, but you can get some of those over an 80-game schedule.” — Bridgeport center Kevin Colley. But: “They’re all lazy penalties, the kind that are unacceptable: tripping, holding,” Bridgeport coach Greg Cronin said. “Then (Friday’s) game got out of hand, and it turned into a gong show.”

–As the gamer points out, Bridgeport had taken a lot of penalties in the first three games while managing to win them all. They’d take a lot of penalties the rest of the way, too, while managing to win not a whole lot more.

–Two hours, 36 minutes. The Sound Tigers and River Rats, in those trappy days, could get out in about two hours on a good night.

–The unofficial totals after the game had Albany for 18 power plays instead of 17. I also messed up my Base-60 math and had Albany for substantially less power-play time than it actually had. (Turns out I corrected myself in a notebook a couple of days later. Could have saved me some time tonight if I’d found it earlier.)

–Steve Regier’s pro debut. The online box has him taking a delay-of-game penalty with 3:15 to go, but the box I sent to the paper has it as a bench minor served by Jim Campbell. What I don’t have is what flavor of delay-of-game penalty it was, and I don’t remember. My hunch is they were slow to put their players out. I don’t think it was getting tossed twice from the faceoff circle, though Bridgeport did take one of those at Albany the previous spring (referee: Francois St. Laurent); wrote it up for a note on the ol’ weekly page. Not sure about this one

–The online box curiously lists Richard Seeley as the captain and has three players with ‘A’s. Keith Aldridge still had the ‘C’, and for that game, it was Colley and Seeley with the ‘A’s.

–The thing that still gets me is that three-on-three, because it came after a four-on-four that I still don’t think should have been effected. But anyway.

–They didn’t play five minutes all night without a change in manpower of some sort. Better: After the midpoint of the game, they didn’t go more than two minutes without a change in manpower. Better still: The only full two-minute span without a change in manpower after the midpoint of the game was that last, full five-on-three for Albany, with 3:15 to go, which were the last two power plays of the game.

Up next: Francois St. Laurent’s Sunday Afternoon Penalty Party! (Nah, probably not.*)

*-Oh, what the heck.

April 5, 2009, vs. Albany:

Postgameblog.