In and out

While Blair Riley got back in practice action after his lower-body injury (and looked OK out there, despite a red no-contact jersey), Mike Halmo took a stick above the eye and missed the end of practice. They’ll have to see how both of them are tomorrow. With Max MacKay still out sick, that left them to finish Thursday with 11 healthy, or at least non-redshirt, forwards.

They wound up back in something resembling the way they had been through the past few weeks, with Halmo back on the left of Nelson and Niederreiter, and Persson-Watkins-Kabanov back together.

Reminders of a busy promotional weekend: Saturday is You Can Play night, with Patrick Burke at 5:30. Sunday is Mark Wotton Bobblehead Day. (The bobblehead apparently does not have an actual wooden stick. This is incomprehensibly disappointing.)

Further concern for Wade MacLeod: The Falcons released a statement today saying “Doctors have discovered a benign mass in Wade’s brain.”

Kael Mouillerat comes back to Connecticut with a four-point game, 375 days after the last one.

I know the “since Lindy Ruff” thing got annoying on Twitter very quickly yesterday, but sorry, I had to share this one: Since Ruff was hired in Buffalo in 1997, 12 AHL teams played their first game… and their last game. (That counts Lowell and Iowa only once each.)

And finally, as Justin Bourne said, a good “Harlem Shake” video. (I probably shouldn’t link to it because of language, but if you can take a few naughty words, find the video of actual people in Harlem, Apollo in the background and all, reacting to this “Harlem Shake” debacle. Classic.)

Michael Fornabaio