Remember wins?

So the power play…

Nah. A fan base, I imagine, exhales.

The goalie makes a couple of big saves. The team wins one again.

And they get a big one from Brock Nelson, sent off 2:11 earlier for a trip while Bridgeport was already killing a penalty (and Adirondack tied it on that delayed penalty).

“He was battling hard all night. He’s been battling hard; he just hadn’t been rewarded,” Scott Pellerin said. “We’ve had chances, we’ve had opportunities around the net. We haven’t been burying them.”

Nelson buried his, slipping the puck through Oliver Lauridsen, getting to the net, putting it over Scott Munroe’s glove.

“I thought the guys battled,” Nelson said. “It’s not fun going through something like this.”

But this was the kind of game they had to win, a team behind them in the standings. They managed.

Not positive whether shots at the second Adirondack goal were 11-3 or 11-4, but either way, Bridgeport only allowed the Phantoms 14 more in the last 46:53, and the Sound Tigers put 36 or 37 on Munroe. (It’s only the seventh time they’ve allowed 25 shots or fewer.)

“The guys have stuck together,” Pellerin said. “It was very nice to hear the music playing in the locker room.”

….

Six back with 22 to play. Speaking of: Prescout. ‘Cause, yeah. (Them, and Charlotte.)

They went down to three lines for the last two periods. Lines finished up with two familiar, Halmo-Nelson-Niederreiter and DeFazio-Campbell-Riley, and a new Combs-Watkins-Backman unit that scored a couple of goals and had chemistry. That left Huxley, Costello and Kabanov to spot in — and not often. Kabanov went all young-Alexei-Kovalev a couple of times in the first period and tried to stickhandle through everybody. Didn’t work. The pairs off the bat were Donovan-Landry, Ness-Jackson and Hill-McIver.

All kinds of DiPietro/Munroe coincidences because of that ’09-10 conditioning stint. With respect, still like mine. DiPietro said he felt good. (Eric Hornick had an interesting note; won’t be three in a row, apparently, as Kenny Reiter goes tomorrow.) He had to move a few times to make stops, and he got them, most memorably stopping Mitch Wahl on the doorstep, going left to right. A good left-pad save on Jason Akeson got them through the final seconds of the first. Apparently the first Phantoms goal didn’t get through to him the first time, hitting Jon Sim in front and caroming to Akeson wide open.

Pellerin said John Persson will be reevaluated tomorrow, termed him “possible.”

Points streak: Might be time to put Nate McIver on the power play. Which set a team record tonight, going 0-for-34. In time, it’s still 2:16 shy of the 0-for-33 in 2004 (which included a major). For the second night in a row, there were times they had some chances, but they didn’t go. (See above.)

Max MacKay was plus-1 with a no-goal in the shootout in his ECHL debut Friday night; he had an assist tonight.

CIAC hockey pairings are official.

And some neat pictures: Mount Etna, from the ISS.

Michael Fornabaio