Great time for that: Thursday notes

A bug’s going through the Bridgeport room, apparently. Today, Stephon Williams, Alan Quine and Carson McMillan were all out. The line combinations stayed steady with guys moved up into those spots for the day. (Though I’d kind of like to see what a Gallant-Mouillierat-Collberg line would look like in real life.)

John Persson practiced again, but the other injured did not. Saw Mike Halmo riding the bike from a distance. We’ll have to see who’s available tomorrow night with this bug going; Gallant, we know for sure, is not, serving the second game of the two-game suspension for accumulated game misconducts. Bob Crawford notes that Hartford can clinch the division with a non-shootout win over Bridgeport and a regulation loss by reeling Syracuse. (Failing that, the Pack will be rooting for Bridgeport on Saturday up in Syracuse. Funny time of year.)

Another reminder/request: The Fake Team Awards balloting remains on until Saturday night. If you’d like.

The Big Club opened the playoffs last night with a convincing win in Washington. Bunch of familiar names all over the scoresheet. Pierre McGuire, after Ryan Strome’s goal, gave a shoutout to Scott Pellerin, talking about the Isles’ kids’ development.

Since 2007-08, playoff coaching wins in the New York Islanders’ NHL/AHL organization: CAPUANO, Jack, 5. That is all. (If you go back three years to the lockout, you only add two names: Dave Baseggio, 3; Ted Nolan, 1. One more year adds Steve Stirling, 18, I think.)

In Montreal, meanwhile, Mark Stone suffered a microfracture in his wrist after taking a pretty nasty slash from P.K. Subban, who got a major and a game misconduct for it. Stone was in and out of the room after that and even wound up getting tossed to the ice in a scrum after the game. Tough night. The war of words may be even tougher. (More fun for us in the media, for sure. Though it shouldn’t carry over into the room. Hoping she later grabbed the guy by the nostrils to move him over.)

The Western Conference games were wild, too. That time of year.

The AHL announces its top goalie this afternoon. Matt Murray’s the favorite, though I tossed a lot of names around for second and third (J.S. Berube, Mike McKenna, Jeremy Smith, Connor Hellebuyck, Jacob Markstrom among them… actually not positive where I left it). Manchester’s Mike Stothers was named coach of the year yesterday. I voted for Murray by accident. (Actually voted for John Hynes.)

And speaking of Markstrom, Utica posted video of his fight with Peter Mannino last night. Gives you the context of the Kramer-Corrado incident that sparked it.

Michael Fornabaio