Multiple overtimes: Thursday notes

Like an hour and a half after Game 1 needed three overtimes, Game 2 was decided in about 45 minutes: Manchester got three points apiece from Jordan Weal, Brian O’Neill and Michael Mersch, and the Monarchs lead the series 2-0 after a 5-2 win tonight. They’ll go to Wilkes-Barre for two or three games.

The multiple-overtime bug traveled to Utica tonight instead, where Curtis Hamilton scored off a failed clear 16 seconds into the fourth OT. Oklahoma City grabs a 1-0 series lead; Game 2 is in like 45 minutes. There were five power plays in overtime; there were only three in regulation. It’s the sixth-longest game in AHL history.

(The afternoon of April 26, I made a list of “longest game last year,” “longest since X,” “longest since Y,” “longest since longest game.” That night, Hartford and Providence went 2:00 into the third overtime and knocked out everything in that list: It was the longest game since the longest game. And now it has been usurped twice in two weeks.)

Up in the NHL, NBC points out that tonight was New Canaan’s Max Pacioretty’s first three-point playoff game. (That’s an NHL.com link with the auto-playing video; sorry.)

At Worlds…. oh, for crying out loud. The U.S. proves, for, what, like the 76th straight time that it can’t have nice things at the World Championship. (Am I overreacting to a pool-play loss? Surely. The U.S. has Denmark (Friday, 2 p.m., NBCSN), Slovenia and Slovakia left, which should be fine. But still.) Brock Nelson did score a goal for the United States in its 5-2 loss to Belarus and I mean come on. (Mark Arcobello, 16-6 on draws with four shots on goal, was chosen the team’s best player. Cool.)

Finland handled Slovenia to join the U.S. and Russia in a three-way tie for second place in the pool, one point behind, somehow, Belarus. (Belarus still has to play Russia, on Saturday, and Finland, on Monday.) In the other pool, Sweden and the Czech Republic won.

Elsewhere, Phineas and Ferb is ending. I am sad. Good show. (H/T: Sherry Ross.)

Michael Fornabaio