Clearing the zone, clearing lanes, clearing snow

(Little snow.)

This morning kind of went the way the first goal went.

I’m pretty sure every PKer had the puck on his stick at one point on that shift. I think it went Langkow, Bruton, Keenan, Mayfield (who’d earlier in the shift had a pretty good stick-in-lane to break up a pass). They all touched the puck. They all didn’t clear.

Reece Scarlett walked the line, found a lane, got a screen, and it was 1-0, and Albany had already kind of weathered the storm.

“That’s 200 feet, every time. We talk about that,” said a heartily disappointed Chris Bruton, who also wasn’t happy with losing Joe Whitney on the second goal.

“We’ve got a couple of days to get right back to work,” Bruton said. “Pelly really challenged us. We had a good spree there. … We’ve got to work harder, to find it in ourselves to be better.”

They can talk about getting outworked, but it wasn’t as if the Devils were setting the world on fire, either. They took advantage of chances. (Plus, since Nov. 1, Bridgeport is 0-3 against Albany and 8-3-0-3 against everybody else.)

“We’ve been playing some good hockey,” Scott Pellerin said. “I’m trying to balance this game out and not go overboard one way, but there were some fundamentals that we didn’t do. To me, we got outworked. When you get outworked, you’re not going to execute, and it goes down from there.”

A sleepwalky kind of game, at least from upstairs.

“There’s no excuses,” Mike Halmo said. “You’ve got to be up for every game.”

….

Or maybe they just missed Palatini.

There was, of course, that big gun missing in the middle. There was no way they were going to play Ryan Strome today once they’d decided to call him up. Johan Sundstrom played just about exclusively in that spot. He made a cameo in his old spot briefly in the middle of the second, after Lee and Halmo had killed a penalty. In the third period, they put Langkow into Sundstrom’s old spot, between Jon Sim and Sean Wiles; that line had been pretty good together when they all arrived last month.

But the combinations could all be changed again as early as the morning: Pellerin said he planned to call Pierre-Marc Bouchard this afternoon to check in and talk about the near future, but he wasn’t sure if Bouchard would be in town for Wednesday’s practice. (There is weather and stuff.) Meanwhile, Strome departed, bag over his shoulder and sticks under his arm, after the game; Arthur Staple reported they plan to have him meet them in Phoenix. Fun while it lasted.

PMB is listed on the roster in 96. That’d be the highest number ever worn by a Sound Tiger. Three guys wore 91 in 2007-08. The only other assignment higher than Kirill Kabanov’s 77 was Brandon Cullen’s 81 in 2006-07, but he never got to wear it because of his concussion problems.

Quite thrilled that the ride home was better than the ride in. No real accumulation; roads just wet, air just over freezing. Announced attendance — tickets distributed — was 7,724. To me, you may as well just take the other 800 tickets and toss them off the roof at that point, announce 8500 and go have a Coke. But oh well. No word on any kind of ticket redemption, though it sounds as if they plan to reschedule the schoolkids for their springtime morning game, April 1 this year.

Just in time for Providence’s first trip in on Saturday, the Bruins’ organizational flux has brought both Scott Campbell and New Canaan’s Jack Downing up from South Carolina.

Portland has a new majority owner. Meanwhile, Springfield sticks around; the Falcons have extended their lease with the MassMutual Center, and they and Columbus have agreed to extend their affiliation agreement through next season, exercising their opt…

Wait…

Falcons Splash Page. Bottom game. Jan. 25 vs. Bridgeport. Special appearance by Red Sox Mascot Wally the Green Monster. Dude.

More tomorrow. (Presumably mascot-unrelated.)

Michael Fornabaio