Rowe out, Fritz in, Graham up, waiting on Mayfield: Thursday notes

News last night of Tanner Fritz’s call-up made clear that the news wasn’t going to be great on Andrew Rowe. It’s worse than that. Brent Thompson said Rowe will be out “long, long term.” When I assumed that meant a fracture after Rowe took Ryan Pulock’s one-timer off an ankle early in Tuesday’s game, let’s just say Thompson didn’t dispel the assumption.

“Andrew Rowe was taking steps to prove he’s a regular American League player … a top-six American Hockey League winger,” Thompson said. “His play away from the puck, I was really happy (with his play).”

A blow both from the player-development standpoint and from a pure production standpoint, the way he’d been scoring. Jared Gomes moved up to Rowe’s spot with Bracken Kearns and Taylor Beck. Fritz, wearing 51 (first since Trevor Gillies), was one of the four guys on the fourth line. They’ll be looking to him for speed and energy. (Fritz’s PTO would expire with the end of the regular season, which is kinda freaky if you sit back and think about it: 25 games to go. Into the last third of the season. It feels like it’s taking forever until you get here.)

On defense, while they await word on any possible discipline for Scott Mayfield for his late-regulation hit on Steve Downie on Tuesday, Jesse Graham is back up from Missouri. No New York Islanders call-up: With nine defensemen on the ice and a pretty hard-skating practice after a day off, the pairs changed every rush, but seemed to see a lot of Graham with Kevin Czuczman.

Providence actually lost a game in regulation last night. A quick sideways glance at the standings with 25 games left: The league’s points-percentage ranking has Bridgeport fifth in the East Atlantic, 40 percentage point/three points with the tiebreaker and a game in hand on St. John’s, so in the crossover spot (hello, Toronto!). On points actually accumulated, Bridgeport is a point ahead of “fourth-place” Providence for fourth in the division, a tiebreaker behind Portland (which has two games in hand), a point and a tiebreaker ahead of the Bruins (which has a game in hand).

This will change approximately 74 times the rest of the way, but whatever.

Springfield sent Alex Vazzano back to Elmira after Tuesday’s game. The Falcons gave a pro tryout to Josh Robinson, who hasn’t lost in regulation all year for Missouri.

And the wacky Flint Firebirds saga took another turn yesterday when the coaching staff was fired…. again. That includes 25-game Sound Tiger Dave Karpa. Today, the OHL stepped in, suspended the owner and won’t let Sergei Kharin coach the team tonight. (It was killing me why I knew Kharin’s name, so I had to search the hard drive: His son Anton came to camp with Bridgeport in 2010.)

Michael Fornabaio