Saying goodbye/moving on: Friday notes

A visitor dropped by Sound Tigers practice this morning at Wonderland, opened the door after a drill, said something to the team, then shook hands all around (and got bear-hugged and lifted off the ground by one Justin Johnson). And then Pierre-Marc Bouchard was off to the Midwest.

“It’s a huge hole, not only on the ice, but off the ice,” Scott Pellerin said. “His professionalism. The respect he had, not only for being here, but for being a leader, a guy who was looked up to. To come here and say goodbye to the guys — he’ll be missed.”

The on-ice hole was filled by Andrew Clark this morning. No other changes, though Chris Langkow was out sick for the day, leaving 11 forwards (Doug Holewa played a little center) and seven defensemen (including Marc Cantin, who obviously isn’t playing this weekend). Pellerin said they’d be talking this afternoon about anything that’d need to be done. “We’re right at the number (18 skaters with Langkow/without Cantin),” Pellerin said. “Right now we’re just focused on playing Albany.”

Edit: The Islanders filled Peter Regin’s spot on the 23-man roster by activating Travis Hamonic from IR. No guarantee they won’t do something else, but there’s that.

The Thunder, in case this is Andrey Pedan’s return, appear to be playing at 11:15 p.m. Eastern tonight in Alaska, if I’ve time-zoned correctly.

Our inside source at NBC had no intel on whether Tomas Marcinko makes an appearance in tonight’s airing of the Olympics opening ceremonies, nor any of the other locally tied guys who could be there. (Didn’t get to watch the stream from anywhere else wait did I say that out loud? No of course authorities there are no Internet streams from anywhere else it’s all about the Red Network. Plausibly live!)

Mike Vaccaro on Ralph Kiner.

And good wishes to Kris Letang, who the Penguins say will miss six weeks after suffering a stroke.

Michael Fornabaio