Mind the gaps: Thursday notes

Optional. Apparent status quo. If it feels like it has been that way for a while, maybe even longer than usual… it is. Painstaking research (cough scrolling through transaction logs over lunch and mumbling dates and doing subtraction in my head) shows that this is already one of the longest periods in Sound Tigers history without a transaction. Only six times before has the team gone two full weeks without a move of one form or another, which will be the case if nothing happens today. (With the Islanders going on break after tonight, we’ll have to see.)

Not surprisingly, four of those six transaction gaps ™ came in lockout seasons: No call-up pressure from above, no clearing space for a guy coming off IR. The log says they went a month and a half without an official transaction early in the first lockout year. They went 28 days without moving a player in or out early in the second lockout year (though there was a transaction — tearing up Jordan Hill’s PTO in favor of an AHL deal — after 24 days). The longest in a non-lockout season was 26 days early in 2009-10, from a defenseman getting sent to the AHL to a defenseman getting called up from the AHL.

In listy form:

Longest gap in days between transactions:

  • 45*: 10/12/04 (Vince Macri to Atlantic City)-11/26/04 (John Morlang PTO, 1 of 7)
  • 26: 10/21/09 (Mark Flood down from NYI)-11/16/09 (James Sixsmith PTO, Andrew MacDonald called up to NYI)
  • 24*: 11/5/12 (Kenny Reiter to Fort Wayne)-11/29/12 (Jordan Hill AHL deal off PTO)#
  • 15: 11/9/15 (Matt Finn up from Missouri)-11/24/15 (J.F. Berube down on conditioning, Carter Verhaeghe to Missouri)
  • 15*: 12/3/12 (Jason Clark to Gwinnett)-12/18/12 (Jack Combs and Chad Costello PTOs)
  • 14*: 10/11/12 (roster set)-10/25/12 (Kenny Reiter up from Fort Wayne)
  • 13: At least five times, most recent current since 1/12/17 (Scott Mayfield up to NYI); before that 11/16/16 (Jesse Graham, Eamon McAdam up from Missouri)-11/29/16 (Ryan Pulock down from NYI).

*-During NHL lockout
#-No in/out transactions until 12/3/12, 28 days

So we’ve come to that last weekend before the break. I assume a superstitious number of you would like to know if Devon Toews is encased in bubble wrap; didn’t see him.

Steve Oleksy to Wilkes-Barre.

And a nice Rob Murray story from Mark Divver, with a few familiar names in there.

Michael Fornabaio