(Black) Bear Market

The University of Maine fired coach Tim Whitehead on Tuesday, and there’s a quite prominent alumnus of that school running the Sound Tigers’ bench right now. Mike McMahon, or at least a source of his, sees Scott Pellerin as one target (along with Greg Cronin, and that’s Jim Montgomery).

Pellerin, reached Wednesday, wouldn’t comment on the job or his possible interest in it. “Right now my focus is on making the playoffs here in Bridgeport, and helping the New York Islanders develop their players for them to make the playoffs,” Pellerin said. “That’s my focus right now, not on any other organization, institution or players at this time.”

So there’s that for now. Sounds like another rough one Tuesday night in Bridgeport (here’s Bill Paxton’s gamer). Adirondack a week and a half ago, Worcester last night: two games where teams that had been knocked effectively out of the playoff race came out and took it to the Sound Tigers. Not to play the counterfactual game, but considering they’re four points behind Hershey, and they got no points of a possible four…

Anyway. (And slightly unfair in many ways, but anyway.) They’re in Syracuse on Friday, and then they play four games (three against Portland) in six days to finish the regular season.

Brock Nelson was not voted to the AHL All-Rookie Team. Providence had two players picked, then clinched the Atlantic Division title when Portland lost (first star: Kael Mouillierat) tonight.

Elsewhere, Julie Chu and the U.S. women are world champions. Amanda Kessel scored the winning goal (with an assist from goalie Jessie Vetter).

And a good day out in Pittsburgh. Probably the neatest thing today was a question for St. Cloud State about the Jarome Iginla trade, of all things. St. Cloud’s Ben Hanowski was one of the Penguins prospects dealt in the deal. Coach Bob Motzko said the next morning at practice he blew the whistle on the ice to call the team around. “I said, anybody else get traded overnight?” Motzko said. “And the first guy laughing was Ben.” Good stuff, maybe topped only by Hobey Baker finalist Drew LeBlanc’s “I’m jealous. I kind of want to be traded for a Hall of Famer.”

Actual hockey Thursday.

Michael Fornabaio