Off to work: Albany postgame

Not a big skill play, Ross Johnston said about his game-winner early Wednesday afternoon. “Just bury your head and shovel it in.”

It seems way too easy to say that’s a metaphor for the rest of this game. When they put their heads down and got to work, good things happened, erasing the soft start.

“It’s a pretty simple game,” Brent Thompson said. “When you play with intensity, finish your hits, the rest follows.”

The Devils, even banged up and a bit depleted, are pretty good. Sure, they’re anything but “Shots 12-3” better than Bridgeport, but they’re a good team. Staked to a 2-0 lead and allowing little… that felt like it was going to take something pretty remarkable.

Thompson said the remarkable started with Ben Holmstrom at the end of the first.

“The easiest way is to do it by example,” Holmstrom said. “We had two good shifts the last four or five minutes. It wasn’t anything crazy, just putting pucks behind them and getting momentum. Coming into the locker room, we built off that.”

Built all the way to a win.

…….

Strange franchise history: 17 games in a row without overtime back to last year, a team record.

Attendance: 7,755, which will prop up that rough start we talked about over the weekend.

Weird sequence in the first period, when off a faceoff Bracken Kearns was called for hooking Joe Blandisi, and Blandisi, who has a reputation, was called for diving. Blandisi was slow getting up and then left the penalty box at the next whistle, with his skate off and help from Scott Wedgewood: here’s apparently why. Blandisi did return for the second period, though.

Hartford’s Calle Andersson is on irrevocable waivers.

Kevin Poulin instagrammed the view from his new place in Astana, Kazakhstan. (Interesting piece on that town.)

Atlas Obscura on voting booths.

And thought this was indeed an interesting fact about Thai surnames. (Hat tip: Tyler Cowan.

More tomorrow.

Michael Fornabaio