Facts that probably amuse only me

Imagine that the AHL hadn’t realigned radically; say it had only swapped Charlotte to the Rumored Conference (put it wherever you’d like) and moved St. John’s to the Atlantic.

ATLANTIC Pts
St. John’s 86
Bridgeport 77
Connecticut 77
Manchester 73
Portland 70
Providence 69
Springfield 68
Worcester 67
   
EAST Pts
x-Norfolk 99
Hershey 86
Wilkes-Barre/Scranton  85 
Syracuse 73
Adirondack 70
Albany 69
Binghamton 59

So your projected playoff pairings at the moment under that system: St. John’s-Manchester; Bridgeport-Connecticut; Norfolk-Syracuse; Hershey-WBS.

By the way, the current projected playoff pairings in real life: (2) St. John’s-(7) Manchester; (3) Bridgeport-(6) Connecticut; (1) Norfolk-(8) Syracuse; (4) Hershey-(5) WBS.

(I’m breaking that 7/8 tie with regulation/OT wins rather than points percentage; the latter is the way the computer breaks it on the league’s site tonight. I lean toward doing that anyway for any purposes other than waivers order, but given the fun I’m trying to have here, it was a no-brainer.)

Norfolk has won 21 in a row (sick) and 15 in a row in regulation, one shy of the AHL non-shootout-era record and two shy of the old AHL record, period (sicker).

Syracuse continues to stalk, four points behind Bridgeport and the Whale after a shootout win Wednesday. Manchester stayed four back, knocked off by Peter Mannino and the Pirates (who’ll be in Saturday).

Jeff Smith is not among the projected referees for the weekend. I’m getting antsy.

Learned on Wednesday that both Blondie’s “The Tide Is High” and the Cadets’ “Stranded in the Jungle” were remakes. Running into the Paragons’ version of the former on the radio was jaw-dropping fun*.

And RIP, Earl Scruggs.

*-It was especially fun because, although I’ve realized while singing along in the car at absurd volumes that the “girl/turn” rhyme in the middle works better with the genders flipped, it never happened to dawn on me that such a version might, you know, exist.

Michael Fornabaio