In the olden days of the livechat on Tuesday afternoons, once I discovered the option, as I recall I’d sometimes lead off with a half-serious poll. Here’s today’s: Which of these is the greatest active Sound Tigers streak:
–Anders Nilsson’s wins in six consecutive decisions, three off the team record and two short of Christopher Gibson’s active eight
–Josh Bailey’s points in eight consecutive games, Bridgeport’s longest active such streak since 2010 except for a few weeks here and there
–Jesse Graham’s assists in four consecutive games, tied for the fifth-longest active such streak in the AHL right now?
Graham has been stuck at four, so to speak, since Dec. 11. He’ll likely get a chance to extend it Tuesday against Springfield. Pat Cullity is out with a lower-body injury, so Graham comes up from Missouri to make it seven. Brent Thompson said the reports were good on both Graham and Matt Finn, but Graham gets the nod this time.
And so ends the transactions streak. It wound up missing the non-lockout record by one day. (Granted, the all-star break may have helped.) To update that list from a couple of weeks ago, longest gap in days between transactions:
45*: 10/12/04 (Vince Macri to Atlantic City)-11/26/04 (John Morlang PTO 1/7)
26: 10/21/09 (Mark Flood down from NYI)-11/16/09 (James Sixsmith PTO, Andrew MacDonald called up to NYI)
25: 1/12/17 (Scott Mayfield up to NYI)-2/6/17 (Jesse Graham up from Missouri)
24*: 11/5/12 (Kenny Reiter to Fort Wayne)-11/29/12 (Jordan Hill signs AHL deal off PTO)#
*-During NHL lockout
#-No in/out transactions until 12/3/12, 28 days
Tanner Fritz’s move to the top line appears to have stuck. What happens with the bottom six seemed less clear. Rather than a fifth line with two, they had four guys in green (the Joneses, Josh Holmstrom and Travis St. Denis) and four in yellow (Ross Johnston, Ben Holmstrom, Colin Markison and Eric Boulton). Thompson called Steve Bernier day-to-day.
Hershey’s win yesterday afternoon dropped Bridgeport back into fifth place by both measures. The Sound Tigers do have three games in hand. (Bridgeport’s 44 games played are, right now, tied with Utica for fewest in the Eastern Conference, and aside from the six Pacific Division 68ers, only Cleveland (43) has played fewer.)
They’ve hit that point in the season that we mentioned when the schedule came out: If there were a postponement of any sort, there are no natural makeup dates until the last week of the season. That’s assuming they can’t play four games in five days, which is what we were told at different points when postponements seemed possible. They could reschedule games quickly, as we mentioned; throw it on the ensuing Monday, for instance, in some cases. Otherwise, it’s the last Wednesday or Thursday of the regular season (or, conceivably in a pinch, Easter).
A fond tip of the cap to Adam Rubin, one of the few tolerable Penn graduates, who’s leaving the Mets beat after 15 years. He’ll be missed.
And, um, that was a football game of some sort last night, huh?