An assortment of factors have us home today listening to Phil‘s call from Glens Falls. We’ll follow Jamie, Diana C. Nearhos and Michael Cignoli. The box will be here. Here’s a better, actual look at the Phantoms’ tuxedo jerseys.
Stayed up for a period and a quarter of the United States’ junior national team’s game against Slovakia. That was quite a bit more than I probably had to see. The U.S. survives and advances to face the Czech Republic an hour earlier Wednesday, 4 a.m. our time.
If you missed it earlier, I tossed up the annual Trivia Quiz early this morning. Hint for the regular readers in the light of day: That 2004-05 PTO/ATO question was a lot more fun-coincidence when the rest of it was just about Combs and Costello.
More closer to gametime.
–Nilsson vs. Munroe.
–McIver’s in, per Jamie’s tweet, and Jackson’s out. Campbell in for Costello, and otherwise lines are as they ended Saturday (I’ll assume for the moment Landry’s got the ‘A’ on the whites (he does)):
BRIDGEPORT
F: Persson-Cizikas (A)-McDonald (C)
Ullstrom-Sundstrom-Niederreiter
DeFazio-Watkins-Riley
Halmo-Campbell-Backman
D: Donovan-Wishart
Ness-McIver
Hill-Landry (A)
(Jackson-scratch)
G: Nilsson
Poulin
–Mike confirms those pairs and has the Phantoms’:
ADIRONDACK
F: McGinn-Schenn-Akeson
Wellwood-Couturier-Ford
Zolnierczyk-Bordson-Rinaldo
FitzGerald-Brown-Harper/(Testwuide-scratch)
D: Konan-Syvret (A)
Manning (A)-Dimmen
Lauridsen-Eddy
G: Munroe
Heeter
–Another early goal. Riley takes it into the zone, Watkins jams it into the net, and Bridgeport’s up 1-0 at 27 seconds.
–Bridgeport’s first goals since Christmas: 1:03 (Niederreiter), 1:57 (Costello), 1:39 (Backman) and now :27 (Watkins). Bridgeport gets an early power play on a Tye McGinn kneeing penalty.
–RT @PhantomsHockey: “FIGHT: FitzGerald drops a Bridgeport player behind the Sound Tigers net & then drops the gloves! #ADKPhantoms” Then, reportedly, dropped, by a Riley left. They’re eight minutes or so in, and sounds like Nilsson has had one or two good stops.
–Matt Konan’s stick gets up on McDonald, and it’s called a double minor at 13:49. Four minutes to play with for the Sound Tigers’ power play.
–Brayden Schenn has a short-handed chance, but after Donovan takes it away, Schenn knocks him down; it’ll be up to a two-minute five-on-three. Bridgeport goes with Donovan and Landry together for the two-man.
–Landry hits the post twice on the five-on-three, and Scott Munroe makes a couple of what sound like good saves.
–The advantage finally ends with 51 seconds left in the double minor as Niederreiter gets called for roughing Lauridsen in front. Bridgeport’s 21-for-21 PK streak will be on the line shortly.
–Bridgeport gets through it, so the streak’s at 22, and with help from a Phil note, they’ve killed 28 of the last 29 back to the first Norfolk road game Dec. 14. The first period ends with incident, as McIver and Rinaldo go at it. Sound Tigers up 1-0.
–The box online, as they get set for the second period, hasn’t been updated fully; compy problems, maybe, as the power plays are out of date, the shots are only on their individually, and the Niederreiter penalty is charged instead to Riley. But Bridgeport by all accounts will begin the second period on its fifth power play out of that scrap at the buzzer. And as I refresh again, it’s up. McIver rough, Rinaldo rough+slash.
–Donovan shot deflected in by Niederreiter at 1:38 with traffic in front, and it’s 2-0 Bridgeport.
–Announced at least as Sundstrom. Phil had them both in front, but he thought all indications were Niederreiter.
–Persson scores from the right circle; points in seven of eight for him. Cal Heeter goes in to replace Scott Munroe at 7:06.
–The Phantoms come on strong. Jeff Dimmen at 9:48, then after killing a FitzGerald penalty for running into Nilsson, Sean Couturier, three and a half minutes apart. It’s 3-2 Bridgeport.
–Exchange of late penalties, Hill for interference, Rinaldo for a hold on Cizikas, and Watkins for a trip. Hill’s penalty’s expiration makes it 23 in a row for Bridgeport, tied for ninth in team history.
–Brandon Manning gets to the front and scores at four-on-four, tying it up with three goals in 8:25.
–The penalties have all expired, so Bridgeport has killed 24 in a row, tied for seventh in team history. They’ll have to try their 25th at the start of the third, as McIver goes for holding with 16.2 seconds left in the second. Adirondack comes all the way back to tie it at 3 after two.
–Kevin Poulin replaces Anders Nilsson to start the third. Well then. Got at least two games where all four goalies played, Dec. 16, 2006, against Lowell (Mike Mole and Billy Thompson for Bridgeport), and the wacky first-season 6-5 home game against Worcester. Anyway. McIver’s penalty is over, so that’s 25 in a row, seventh alone in team history.
–Time hurries on; chances back and forth, but Heeter and Poulin sound good. A little under nine minutes to go.
–DeFazio for a high-stick on Manning with 6:28 left. The Sound Tigers get through it, though, their 26th in a row, which ties for fifth in team history.
–In context, because several of those 26 power plays were shortened, this isn’t a particularly long streak in straight-up time. On the fly, looks like 42 minutes, 4 seconds; none of the other 26-or-better streaks were shorter than 44:37. Getting late in regulation.
–On to overtime. Bridgeport earns at least a point for the ninth time in 10 games after that eight-game winless streak.
–The teams trade chances, but the goalies stand up to them, and it’s on to the bonus round.
–Think they’re short a power play for Bridgeport on the sheet; got the Sound Tigers at 1-for-6. Anyway.
–Niederreiter, Ullstrom and Landry in the shootout against just Akeson for Adirondack in four rounds, and it ends Bridgeport 4, Adirondack 3 (SO). Maybe not the way they wanted to win it, but it’s a win, and the tag on that score will only hurt in a tiebreaker. #pointsforall
–The shots have changed three times on the sheet since the end of regulation. Gonna sit back and wait for the official.
–Funny enough, regulation shots reverted to the way they were on the sheet to end regulation time. Both Poulin and Heeter made 17 saves.
–Left-out edit: Micheal Haley has Goal 3.
–So the Phantoms turned up their game down 3-0. Scott Pellerin countered with a goalie change to start the third. “It was one of those energy things for our team,” Pellerin said. “They got those two on us, I believed, as a team, I wasn’t happy with the way they reacted. I talked to Anders about it. Poulie went in and was able to solidify things for our team. He made some big stops in the shootout.”
Was it just the Phantoms turning it up, something they were doing as opposed to what Bridgeport did? “We had two breakdowns they capitalized on. One, a breakout, our defenseman got hooked (Jordan Hill, if I remember a Jamie tweet), and our guys were anticipating a specific play, and they found Couturier. At four-on-four, they jammed at the puck and knocked it in.” They gave up some chances.
But special teams were bright spots. The penalty kill rolls on. “The guys are doing well. (Adirondack) has some guys that can make plays.” Asked about that five-on-three, which sounded like they moved it great and hit two posts: “The five-on-three was probably the best five-on-three I’ve seen in a while. We just weren’t able to put the puck across the goal line.”
So maybe not the way they wanted to do it, but they did it. Tomorrow’s an off day.
…….
So endeth 2012 (46-21-1-7 with five shootout wins, 100 points in 75 games). Remember how things felt at the end of 2011? Yeah, 2012 was a pretty good year for the Sound Tigers, all things considered, except for that pesky win-a-playoff-round thing.
Five favorite headers this year. And five favorite posts as well. (For certain summertime arguments, this may be useful.)
Tip of cap to the victors, Los Angeles (with local boy Jonathan Quick), Norfolk (with prominent alum Trevor Smith) and the Florida Everblades.
The hockey world lost, among many others, Jim Armstrong, Ron Caron, Carrie Selivanov, Ron Stewart, Kaspars Astashenko, Herb Carnegie, Emile Bouchard, Jerry Toppazzini, Paul Cyr, Vladimir Krutov, Bryan Rufenach, Fernie Flaman, Garrett Larson, Jessica Ghawi, Anna Ftorek, Don “Bones” Raleigh, Harold Zeigler, Karl-Gustav Kaisla, Chris Serino and David Courtney, among others. Locally, we said goodbye to Dr. Ken Dressler, Dr. Mel Goldstein, Maureen Minnick, Charlie Mitchell, Lt. Russ Neary, Jack Hunt, Arnold Dean and Rick Davis. And Dec. 14 was about the most tragic day I ever want to live through. Though I have spent the past two and a half weeks getting to know and love 26 people I’ll never meet, I hope never again to be able to recognize strangers’ 6-year-olds and their biographies.
We said “hi” to folks like Colin McDonald, Brandon DeFazio, Johan Sundstrom, Kirill Kabanov, Nathan McIver, Matt Watkins, Brock Nelson, John Persson, Mike Halmo, Marc Cantin, Jason Clark, Max MacKay, Kenny Reiter (sort of, though we’d sat in on a presser or two), Jon Landry, Mathieu Aubin, Brandon Gentile, Barry Goers, Dallas Jackson, Marc-Olivier Vallerand, Yannick Riendeau, Russ Sinkewich, Rylan Galiardi, Ethan Cox, Dan Clarke, Tyler Gron, Jordie Johnston, Jordan Hill, Scott Campbell, Chad Costello and Jack Combs. We said hello again to Riley Gill.
We bade farewell, at least for now, to Micheal Haley, Dylan Reese, Tomas Marcinko, Rhett Rakhshani, Justin DiBenedetto, Trevor Gillies, Tony Romano, Trevor Frischmon, Kael Mouillierat, Scott Howes, Tyler McNeely, Tim Wallace, Steve Oleksy, Mark Katic, Benn Olson, Anton Klementyev, and, um, the NHL.
And Jeremy Colliton has been day-to-day for exactly 300 days now. Dunno about you, but I miss that guy.
A happy, healthy, bright new year to you and to all. Thanks for hanging around.