Signs of growth, etc: Hartford postgame

Yann Danis, 32 shots, 30 saves, a few big ones, bad breaks, you feel like you’ve seen this episode before.

But it’s the little things, like the Minions playing a solid game, like Adam Pelech and Scott Mayfield and Mark Louis jumping in and getting some scoring chances and making you think maybe this is the night.

And then there’s Ryan Pulock carrying the mail. We’ve seen the shot; we’ve seen some moves. We haven’t seen him go end-to-end or leading the rush a ton, but he did it four or five times tonight.

“I think it’s just confidence,” Pulock said. “It’s something I did in junior, at the start of the year. … I’m really feeling confident. It can be a big part of my game.”

Pulock led everybody with five shots. He put the puck to the net on the play that became Dustin Jeffrey’s goal at the end of the first.

Bridgeport had chances to get a lead early in the second and couldn’t do it. Joey Crabb tipped in the go-ahead goal. Marek Hrivik got a fortunate bounce off Alan Quine.

Matt Carkner’s blast found its way past Danis, but that was all.

“We had a lot of shots from the perimeter,” Brent Thompson said. “We had a lot of opportunities to get to rebounds. I don’t think we were hungry enough. One of our objectives was 30-plus shots … but we’ve got to bury those secondary chances.”

…….

Sebastian Collberg and John Persson didn’t play after about the game’s midpoint. Bridgeport mostly rolled the four forwards with the other three sets of wingers. “They need to be able to make those strong wall plays,” Thompson said. “They need to be better. It’s a challenge. This is a learning experience for both of them.”

Little Things To Keep The Math On: Hartford leads the season series 5-4, and 12-10 in points, but a Bridgeport regulation win could give it a win on goal differential (32-29), if you wanted to think that way. Standings-wise, Norfolk beat Lehigh Valley; a win Saturday in Wilkes-Barre or a Bridgeport regulation loss in Syracuse (or if they both overtime-lose), and the Admirals clinch 14th.

Nice crowd tonight. Felt kind of old-school.

I combined “exuberance” and “enthusiasm” interviewing Calder Brooks tonight and produced “exuberasm,” which kind of sounds obscene. What was that word Marc Crawford accidentally coined like 15 years ago? Same kind of portmanteau. (Less obscene.) It was perfect.

Ross Johnston is in town; Josh Ho-Sang’s junior season ended tonight, too, as Michael Dal Colle moves on. Kyle Burroughs’ hinges on double (at this writing) overtime.

Prescout. Two two-goal leads, both gone. Not a lot of joy in that room. Hartford’s magic number for the division is one point.

The Big Club also had two two-goal leads. Both gone. They’re back home Sunday for Game 3.

Congrats to our old buddy Ian Powers on an APSE award.

Our Chris McNamee on his son, love, patience and autism.

And RIP, Jaroslav Holik.

Michael Fornabaio