Still tighter: Friday notes

Bridgeport practiced out in Wilkes-Barre today, so sight-unseen for us. Justin Vaive sounded very doubtful for this weekend. As mentioned the other day, doesn’t sound like they planned to change much if anything from Tuesday’s strong effort.

The Sound Tigers’ magic number didn’t change, and things tightened up around them, too. Friday night was the first of three Portland-Providence meetings in nine days, which is a lot of points floating around around Bridgeport. Portland got goals from Connor Brickley and Robbie Schremp in a 2-0 win over Providence. Brady Skjei had three points in Hartford’s win over Hershey. Providence has 82 points, Bridgeport is one behind, Portland is two back of Bridgeport, and the Wolf Pack (albeit in one more game) are two points behind the Pirates. Ten points separate first (Wilkes-Barre, on the tiebreaker) to sixth (Hartford), with eight games left for everyone except the Wolf Pack (seven).

The North-Division half of Bridgeport’s equation got a little easier: Rochester and Syracuse both lost.

Bridgeport’s magic number, then, is still 11 over Hartford (15 Portland, 18 Providence), and now is seven over Syracuse and three over Rochester.

Travis Hamonic will miss the rest of the regular season, Jack Capuano announced today at Islanders practice, as reported widely down there. The rest of the regular season, for them, is about a week and a half. So we’ll see.

Much credit to the Devils for their commitment to the gag today. (More from Rich Chere.)

Onetime — er, two-time — Sound Tigers forward Brock Montpetit scored a big one in Sweden today.

And a neat story, via Atlas Obscura, on a possible newly found Viking outpost in western Newfoundland.

Edit: Missed this: RIP, Earl Hamner.

Michael Fornabaio