First round of cuts: Friday notes

Six players missing this afternoon, headed for Missouri:

F: Scott Allen, Tanner Fritz, Andrew Johnston, Danick Paquette, John Schiavo; D: Dax Lauwers

“They’ve obviously got to still earn a spot there,” Brent Thompson said. “Our camps have been very competitive, intense training camps, and I’m really, really happy with those guys, the way they played last night. Unfortunately, there are a few other guys we need to see (in a game). We need to see our young guys.”

All six were on tryouts. Appears they go with the Missouri staff: left with the Bridgeport coaches plus Eric Cairns and Bernie Cassell on the ice today.

To regroup, today they looked something like, in no particular order and D not necessarily actually paired, especially since there are still a lot of righties here:

Group 1
F: Gomes-Kearns-Whitney
Vaive-Beck-Florek
Collberg-B.Holmstrom-Johnston
Halmo-Quine-Wright
D: Pelech-Mayfield
Czuczman-Graham
Leduc-Nilsson
Carkner

Group 2
F:Sylvestre-Verhaeghe-Rowe
K.Jones-C.Jones-Markison
J.Holmstrom-Root-Barnes
D: Cullity-Burroughs
Lafranchise-Aneloski
Finn-Ludwig
Schneider

That swaps Taylor Beck and Jared Gomes from what’d been going the past few days. It’s way too early to obsess over line combinations, but I obsessed anyway and asked, and Thompson just said he wanted to see Beck in the middle and Gomes as an energy guy on the wing. Different options.

So 21 forwards, 14 defensemen (with Burroughs still not technically assigned, coming back from injury) and three goalies. Chris Gibson went with both groups; Jason Missiaen was with the early ones, and Parker Milner skated with the second group.

And in the most important news, confirmed what his helmet said: Mike Halmo is changing his number to 28, his junior number. “Me and Tie Domi,” he said.

Michael Fornabaio