RT @AdmiralsVoice ‘Turn Back The Clock Night’ with 50-cents dogs, soda & popcorn as @NorfolkAdmirals host @TheSoundTigers 730pm @ Scope. Join us! Come hungry!
Bridgeport will be satisfied with turning back the clock to early November (results-wise, at least). We’ll be listening to Pete Michaud (audio/pay-per-view). Following Twitter reports from Paul, Pete, the Ads’ official feed and their play-by-play account.
Penalty-kill stats compiled for the heck of it here. Stay out of the box. Simple.
The box (score) should be here. Jake Brenk in charge: His only other appearance in a Bridgeport game was the night the Sound Tigers started 6-for-6 on the power play.
Down in South Carolina, Andrew Miller on Scott Ford, toiling in the Coast at almost 35 — and apparently loving it. (Via Mark Divver.)
–Leggio vs. LaBarbera, Pete says.
–Meanwhile the Admirals’ account says Gibson. We’ll see. Edit: They now say Barbs.
NORFOLK from Pete
F: Kerdiles-Karlsson-Leblanc
Yip-Wagner-Friberg
Laganiere-Steckel-Cramarossa
MacIntyre-Sarault-Bailey
D: Bell-Clark
McIver-Manson
O’Brien-Nightingale
G: LaBarbera
Gibson
R: Brenk. L: George, Ritter.
Looks like C.J. Stretch and Kevin Czuczman are scratched, which could leave something like:
BRIDGEPORT
F: Sivak-Mouillierat-McDonald (A)
Zolnierczyk (A)-Quine-Conacher
Gillies-Sundstrom-Courtnall
Gallant-Langkow-Vaughan
D: Ness (C)-Pulock
Pelech-Mayfield
Reinhart-Graham
G: Leggio
Poulin
–Colin McDonald takes a neutral-zone turnover, changes gears up the left wing past Bell and goes over LaBarbera’s glove for a 1-0 Bridgeport lead at 7:06.
–Louis Leblanc ties it on a power play. Leggio stopped Sarault’s initial shot but Sarault got it back and put it to Leblanc the left with 7:38 left in the first.
–Ex-Yalie Antoine Laganiere gets the second assist.
–Vaughan hooks an Admiral cutting to the net, and Laganiere scores on the power play with 2:34 left. Sarault had the puck in the right circle and put it low to an all-alone Laganiere at the right post. He had time to take it to the front and put it by Leggio. 2-1 Admirals.
–That’s how the first period ends. Shots just 7-3 Bridgeport, and the Admirals scored on the last two.
–Reinhart, hit into the endboards by Leblanc on the second shift of the second period, goes to the room with Dave Stickney soon after.
—Looks like Scooter Vaughan is back on defense in Reinhart’s place.
–On a three-on-two, Quine feeds Zolnierczyk feeds Conacher at the right post, and Conacher buries it to tie it in his return to his old rink. 2-2.
–After Courtnall gets tripped on the next shift, McDonald tees up a Pulock one-timer from the top of the right circle. Pulock’s 10th goal, his ninth on the power play, and Bridgeport quickly leads 3-2 with a little over eight minutes left in the second.
–Aside from a couple of short-handed breakdowns, this has been a pretty good two periods for Bridgeport, which leads 3-2 after two. The Sound Tigers killed three power plays — one, just 20 seconds long, may’ve included the best scoring chance — in the second.
–Shots on goal are 21-8. Bridgeport’s record is 14, on Feb. 27, 2011. (Hershey won 3-2.)
–As tweeted, Ryan Pulock has tied Bruno Gervais’ team record for power-play goals by a defenseman in a season. Gervais scored 13 in his Bridgeport career to set the record. Jamie Fraser had 11, including eight in 2007-08. Brandon Smith and Matt Donovan had 10 apiece. Pulock is playing his 27th career AHL game. Gervais played the fewest games of the guys ahead of him, 134.
–Neutral-zone turnover on the second shift of the third period and McDonald, again, finishes it off to make it 4-2. Leggio had stopped Brandon Yip in front on the first shift.
–Doesn’t look like Reinhart has reappeared.
–Zolnierczyk trips Kerdiles midway through the third after Norfolk’s best pressure in a long time.
–Think that shots-against record is going to be safe for another night. Ads have 12 credited on the online box at the moment, but that may be behind.
–After back-to-back Bridgeport penalty kills (Norfolk’s 2-for-7), Courtnall keeps the feet moving to draw a Clark hooking penalty with 3:11 left.
–Zolnierczyk backhands one home into the empty net with 1.7 seconds left: Bridgeport 5, Norfolk 2, final. First regulation win in the past eight road games for Bridgeport, and snaps Dave Leggio’s three-game losing streak.
–Putting together a story, I had the Admirals’ postgame show on as background and was interested to, it sounded like, hear Admirals corporate sales manager and occasional color man Dennis McEwen say this was a game he thought Norfolk could dominate. Interesting: I’d almost looked at it the diametric opposite. This was a team that Bridgeport had already dominated once. In fact, though the stat’s been up and down (mostly down), this was Bridgeport’s best Fenwick Close game, 56.4 percent, by my count since that last Norfolk game (they’ve had slightly better even-strength games since).
The third period may’ve been, as Brent Thompson said, a little sloppy. But the game was pretty much over.
“You’ve got to be aware of their forwards,” Thompson said. “In the second period, they got behind us a few times, and Leggio made some big saves for us. It was a great road effort.”
Leggio, he said, settled in in the second period.
“Both teams worked very hard,” Thompson said. “It was a good road test for us. We definitely needed that first one to start the weekend.”
Reinhart is day-to-day. Thompson said tomorrow is a possibility if he’s feeling OK.
More then.