Things add up

It didn’t look like their night for a while. Chances weren’t going. Anton Khudobin was making saves. The Bruins built themselves a lead.

It wasn’t big enough. No Cizikas, no Ullstrom, no great shakes for once from the goaltending: No biggie.

Blair Riley takes a cross-check and takes offense. “He’s been great for us from the beginning,” Jeremy Colliton said. “He plays extremely hard, and he sticks up for his teammates. The past few games, we’ve seen he’s got some hands, too. He did help get us going.”

Tony Romano puts a shot toward the net that caroms over to Justin DiBenedetto for the first goal of the comeback. Tyler McNeely steals the puck and gets it to the net with Sean Backman and Trevor Frischmon. Sweet behind-the-back pass from Scott Howes to Micheal Haley. Haley gets another one, off a defenseman’s stick.

And then after Providence ties it up again, DiBenedetto battles through the guy behind the net… “I Kind of thought he was going to get it to me. I knew what I wanted to do with it,” Colliton said. “I was just praying it would come out on my side.”

It did. Colliton backhanded it in upstairs, off Michael Hutchinson and in. Bridgeport held on, a team effort all around.

….

Colliton’s 200th point kind of happened twice. He had gotten credit for an assist on DiBenedetto’s goal, but it turned out to belong to Aaron Ness. The real 200th was a little better than a second assist. “To get to 201, you’ve got to get to 200,” he said. Good to get it in a win, he said. Second place is Rob Collins’ 163, which of course was the team record for almost five years.

Calvin de Haan got himself back to work, and he said he felt fine. “I was a little hesitant. I was nervous, my first game,” de Haan said. “That’s expected.” He said he got his legs under him as the game went on and settled in. “It’s good to be back.” He started on the right side with Aaron Ness, but then he switched places with Jon Landry, going to the left side with Ty Wishart, his usual partner much of the season. “We wanted to get him back with Wishart,” Thompson said. “It helped him settle down and helped Wish settle down. Landry helped Ness settle down; I thought Ness was a little scrambly early on.”

Never asked about it, but Landry played a shift at forward on the second-unit power play in the first period. Haley played in that spot in the third period. That worked out.

Six home wins in a row ties for third in team history. But Blair Riley’s goal-scoring streak ends at two.

Not sure what happened to Anton Khudobin after the second period. He was still at the bench, which was two men short for the third, Bobby Robins (didn’t see anything happen to him, either) and Kevan Miller (who took a few punches from Riley).

Prescout. Albany’s just four points behind Bridgeport and Hartford, which lost tonight at Springfield.

Wilkes-Barre is down to Patrick Killeen in goal after Scott Munroe got hurt tonight.

And RIP, Billy Strange.

Michael Fornabaio