Syracuse liveblog

No Syracuse for us. We’ll be listening to Jason Lockhart on AHL Live (Edit: try this) and following Lindsay Kramer and Jamie on Twitter.

Bridgeport goes for its seventh consecutive win on the road. Appears the same lineup, though not sure about the goalie.

Minor alumni note: Binghamton traded Max Gratchev to Springfield, though he’ll remain in the ECHL for now.

–Poulin starts again, says Jamie, vs. Tarkki. Both played well last night.

–Referee Darcy Burchell works his first Bridgeport game. NHL hire out of Hamilton.

–I’m getting nothing on AHL Live, but the Crunch’s flagship is streaming now.

–As the game gets going, they mention Gillies’ toughness as an enforcer. He was a pretty good force last night without dropping the gloves. Forced a few turnovers as Phantoms heard footsteps. Haley gets called for charging here early.

–Kyle Palmieri’s 25th gives him the AHL goal-scoring lead and gives the Crunch a 1-0 lead. Shots are 10-1 on the sheet.

–Mouillierat gets it at the front of the net and puts it in. Jamie says Ullstrom’s forecheck helped get the puck.

–The teams have combined for four penalties (alternating) in just over six minutes here. The Crunch are going to their third power play after these messages.

–No, never mind, coincidental minors, four-on-four, PPs remain 2-2.

Box here, by the way.

–It’s 1-1 after one, and Bridgeport will begin the third with 1:39 of power-play time thanks to a J.F. Jacques tripping penalty. Shots were, I think, 11-1 Syracuse; they appear to be 13-9 to end the period.

–Interesting that on the radio the Syracuse color man said there’ll be three seconds of four-on-three, that Jamie and Lindsay both say there’s 1:37 left on Jacques’ penalty, but the tweets earlier said Jacques went in with 20.9 left in the period, and the box says 18:05 for the coincidental minors and 19:39 (as you’d expect from 20.9) for Jacques’ penalty. Did the penalty clocks run an extra two seconds after the period?

–With Gillies off for interference, Peter Holland makes it 2-1.

–It’s almost 11 minutes into the second, and Bridgeport is stuck on the 11 shots it had after the Jacques penalty ended.

–Bridgeport is no longer stuck on the 11 shots. Two more out of nowhere. Poulin meanwhile stones a couple of Crunch in tight.

–Haley off for slashing Palmieri’s stick, and Palmieri sets up Holland for a 3-1 lead late in the second. The Crunch are 3-for-4 on the power play.

–The Sound Tigers survive a DiBenedetto tripping minor but trail the Crunch 3-1 after two, 20 minutes away from their first road loss since New Year’s Eve.

–I lost the feed for a couple of minutes, but as it comes back, Casey Cizikas scores through traffic, extending his scoring streak to five and cutting Syracuse’s lead to 3-2 early in the period.

–The puck crosses the line behind Tarkki, Haley goes into Tarkki, Fraser drops Haley. It winds up a four-on-four and no goal with 13:13 left.

–And now a long four-on-three for Bridgeport with Holland going.

–Syracuse kills it off with about 10 minutes to go.

–McMillan (Jason and co. believe) taps in a feed from Clark (who gets credit at the moment) to give the Crunch a two-goal lead again with 8:33 left.

–Hartford has lost in regulation, so if it gets you, Bridgeport will be in first at the break no matter what happens in this one. And if this score holds up, the division will be separated, top to bottom, by three points.

–McMillan does get the goal, and now Colliton for a hold with about five minutes left.

–Haley scores a short-handed goal off a Cizikas faceoff win to cut it to 4-3.

–They made a big deal on the radio, by the way, about Colliton taking that penalty. Oleksy is listed on the gamesheet. Either way. One-goal game, getting late in that penalty, whoever’s serving it. Edit: Jamie has Colliton, too.

–Possible they intended to put in 15-McMillan for the goal and put in 15-Oleksy for the penalty. McMillan’s goal isn’t in the box yet. Poulin to the bench with about a minute left.

–And Bridgeport ties it. Howes on a rebound with 30 seconds to go.

–On to overtime. That’s Howes’ first goal since Dec. 26.

–Poulin robs Maroon in front. Cizikas, meanwhile, has three points for the third game in a row since they named him to the all-star game.

–On to the bonus round. Bridgeport still hasn’t lost with the clock running since New Year’s, 11 games now, tied for the third-longest such streak in team history and the second-longest on the road. (That’s straight unbeaten in the era before the shootout, and win/shootout loss in the shootout era.)

–Howes and Ullstrom score, Syracuse goes 0-for-4, and it’s over: Bridgeport 5, Syracuse 4 (SO), final. Quite a comeback.

–The shots have changed a couple of times, but it looks like 30 saves for Poulin. He sums it up on Twitter.

–Brent Thompson compared it to the last Norfolk game. “We dominated the third period, but it went as a loss,” Thompson said. Tonight, they got rewarded. Five-on-five, he was pretty happy, except for the penalties (“we were very undisciplined, the slashes, the chopping. We needed to move our feet and get ourselves in body position”), which led to his issue with the penalty kill (“you want to know about the three goals, it was three turnovers. Each one, we didn’t clear the puck, and they took advantage.” That has kind of come and gone the past few weeks, but it has been there before). But a gutsy win. He said Haley’s short-hander was a bullet — “you’ve got to take a look at that shot” — off Cizikas’ faceoff win. And Howes, “our objective was shoot and get secondary chances. We needed net drive.” He did that, and he found the rebound.

So, all-star break. We’re going out where the sand’s turning to gold. All Atkinson, all the time. (Much of the time, anyway.)

Michael Fornabaio