So they start out with two really good shifts, a couple of really good scoring chances, and boom, Joe Whitney flies the zone, Paul Thompson finds him, breakaway, bam, it’s 1-0 Devils, and for crying out loud, is there any “here we go again” going on on the Bridgeport bench?
“I don’t think so,” Scott Mayfield said. “We knew we needed to come out and just play hard and get two points out of this game. … They made a nice play, and maybe we didn’t read it really well, but we really responded.”
A special-teams game, to be sure — (probably) won’t do the whole chart, but I had a total of 8:07 at five-on-five in the second period, which featured three unsportsmanlike-conduct minors, two on Reid Boucher — but the more time was spent playing five-on-five, the better Bridgeport was in the first two periods, and even again after the Devils cut it to a goal.
And special teams got the job done. The first Devils five-on-three was the big one, and Mayfield was among those coming up clutch.
“We have a good kill, I think, if sometimes it doesn’t seem like it,” Mayfield said. “We started out the season really hot on percentage. … We know where we need to be. We made sure to block shots. Your goalie has to be your best penalty killer, and he was.
“It can be momentum-changing when you kill a five-on-three.”
In this case, it just helped keep the momentum.
……….
Team’s off tomorrow. More Tuesday, unless warranted. Tuesday includes a hockey doubleheader over here, too: Fairfield Prep vs. Notre Dame-Fairfield at 5:15, then UConn-Colorado College at 7:30. Edit: Informed it’s actually a tripleheader: West Haven and ND-Fairfield at 3:30.
If you didn’t see it pregame, Loic Leduc has been called up from Stockton with the defense hurting. “We want to give him a look. He’s an important piece, a draft pick,” Brent Thompson said. “He’s been working really hard down in Stockton. He’s another big (player), 6-6, a great stick. He’s going to be raw; he’s got a lot of work to do, but like I say, where we’re at right now, he can help the defense.”
Griffin Reinhart is day-to-day, wouldn’t have been 100 percent, Thompson said.
Could swear that was Paul Thompson’s goal in the final seconds, but it’s still listed as Mike Sislo’s on the final box. Looked like it hit something, anyway. Also on the final box: Reid Boucher, after two unsportsmanlikes in the second, got a misconduct after the buzzer.
Belated prescout from last night. When shootouts are fun: The double shutout, in which someone gets a loss.
Presented without comment. But I enjoyed it.
And there was this:
Jedi Storm has just defeated Darth Vader by shooting him in the chest with a T-shirt gun. Vader is being carted off by paramedics.
— Michael Fornabaio (@fornabaioctp) January 4, 2015
………
I didn’t have cable for three years in college. I didn’t have ESPN2 at home at that point. By accident of circumstance, my introduction to Stuart Scott came in print: In my junior year, every freshman on our newspaper staff was trying to write like he talked. RIP.