Just a little surreal to see Tim Wallace with that cat on his shirt again. If I haven’t missed anyone, when he plays, he’ll have gone the longest for a skater between games for the Bridgeport Sound Tigers. (Rick DiPietro went longer between his December conditioning stints in 2003 and 2009.) He slotted into, as you might expect, the Steve Bernier spot, with Andrew Rowe and Bracken Kearns. Carter Verhaeghe was an Honorary Jones Brother.
Brant Harris was not out there; he’s headed back to Florida. “Listen, Brant Harris played great for us,” Brent Thompson said. “He showed he could be a regular in the American Hockey League.” Wallace, obviously, takes over the spot where Harris most naturally fit, and they’ve got 15 forwards.
Pat Cullity and Stephon Williams were back as well, as promised. Cullity said he’s feeling good, back up to speed after the three games with Missouri.
Friday scoreboard watching (EastWatch ’17): doubling-as-a-prescout Providence at Hartford (the Bruins, reports Mark Divver, are without Malcolm Subban and, again, Jordan Szwarz; they called up Milford’s Mark Naclerio yesterday); Wilkes-Barre at Syracuse. (I have made my HTML life so much more difficult with that superscript Real Wins feature in EastWatch. Not so much for the superscripts themselves, but because I’ve got to put them into the blank cells to keep the rows even.)
Some fellow named Halak starts tonight for the Big Club. Arthur Staple passes on the Ryan Strome prognosis.
Barzal-Wotherspoon begins tonight in Seattle. At this time of year from the up-here perspective, those series are best viewed in “not before” terms. This one can’t end before next Friday. David Quenneville’s Medicine Hat Tigers start tonight, too, against Brandon; they’re not-before Wednesday. And the NCAA tournament starts this afternoon.
Speaking of NCAA tournaments, women’s basketball has taken over at Harbor Yard. We’ll have people there. (One of them’s Chris Elsberry, who passes along what sounds like some relatively good news on Fairfield high school hockey goalie Charlie Capalbo, recently diagnosed with lymphoma.)
Washington called up Paul Carey. Hershey’s in St. John’s for two this weekend.
And the joys of covering the AHL sometimes: John Altavilla writes a Jeff Malcolm feature for the Courant… that runs the day he’s sent down to the ECHL. Been there.