If the Sound Tigers turned the corner on Sunday, they did it the wrong way on a one-way street. If they set a standard Sunday, this was nonstandard.
“Yeah, I’m surprised, to be honest,” Thompson said. “I thought we set a standard, a level that was high. It’s very disappointing.
These things happen, Thompson said. You’ll have nights like this. But so soon after so dominant a performance for 40 minutes on the Rock…
“The consistency level has to be there, game-in, game-out. That’s the goal. We didn’t rise to the challenge tonight.”
The Falcons were coming from the start, and if not for Christopher Gibson, it’d have been over earlier. Guys left open, guys (usually Lucas Lessio) creating things.
“Almost every goal, you could see some sort of mental mistake,” Matt Carkner said.
They’ll have a day of practice to try to shake it all out before Albany. And then they’ll have another day before Utica.
….
On Scott Mayfield: “He’s at home resting,” Thompson said. “That’s all I can say, a healthy scratch.”
Without Mayfield, the penalty-kill defense pairs were Pelech-Carkner, Czuczman-Pulock, with Graham stepping in when a defenseman was in the box. Power-play units were the four-forward set with Vaive in front, Whitney-Kearns-Beck and Pulock; then Halmo-Quine-Petrov with Finn and Graham. That latter unit had a pretty good second-period power play that couldn’t put one away. The former, with Quine instead of Vaive, worked the long two-man advantage in the third that hit a post and had some other shots but couldn’t get Bridgeport back in the game.
The Johnston-Jones-Florek line started the third period where it hadn’t the first two. Jones in particular appeared to get more ice time as things got mixy/matchy late.
The Falcons’ pregame video includes Matt Donovan and Chris Bruton in Bridgeport, plus at least one Connecticut Whale. May be some updates needed. Kudos to the Falcons, though, for some kind of honesty in attendance. It was a Wednesday night in October, and the Falcons announced 1,108. That’s the fourth-lowest announced crowd ever to see a Sound Tigers game; the low four had all been Lowell until tonight (876, Oct. 24, 2007; 1,018, March 10, 2009; 1,103, Oct. 20, 2009; 1,117, Dec. 7, 2008). The Sound Tigers’ low announced crowd at Harbor Yard is 1,307, Dec. 19, 2007, vs. Norfolk.
Before the game, Thompson was about as smiley as I’ve ever seen him over his son Tage’s big night last night for UConn. Pretty neat to see him score his first three collegiate goals.
The Capitals honored Andi Lambert tonight, and Chuck Gormley wrote a nice piece. (Video autoplays.)
The Blackhawks tweeted video of a drill Joel Quenneville ran in honor of Jimmy Roberts.
And…
In 1986 .@mets lost one-run game on unearned run in Game 1, then got blown out in Game 2, then won World Series in seven games.
— Neil Best (@sportswatch) October 29, 2015
Welp, gotta cling to something.