The first man off the ice for Sound Tigers practice departed for the room at 11:39 a.m. Before the room opened to us the ink-stained, Arthur Staple (with ace new Twitter avatar) dropped that Steve Bernier and Stephen Gionta are on waivers. That gets the Islanders’ roster to 23, compliant for opening night.
Brent Thompson likely didn’t know that before he talked to us; said if this is the team he takes to Binghamton, he’s fine with that, because these guys work.
But it’s quite possible they get a couple of additions at noon tomorrow. In the meantime, here’s how they ran this morning, in no particular order, complete with Casey Bailey, now on an AHL SPC, adding a 20-goal scorer to a forward corps that needed scoring depth:
F: Gaudreau-St. Denis-Bailey
Johnston-Stevens-Fritz
Dal Colle-C.Jones-Bourque
Turcotte-Schempp-B.Holmstrom
K.Jones-Eansor-J.Holmstrom
D: Toews-Burroughs
Vande Sompel-Lafranchise
Helgeson-Aho
Cullity-Wotherspoon
G: Gibson
Gudlevskis
McAdam
Andrey Pedan, J.F. Berube and Cory Conacher are among the many others on waivers today, the last day to get them on to get them down in time for the roster deadline. And Tage Thompson makes the Blues.
Worcester got started today. Among those in Railers camp on tryouts: Ray Boudiette of Fairfield and, apparently, Redding, who was captain of the club team at URI.
Among those sent to the Coast elsewhere: Matt Finn to Florida, Mark Naclerio to Reading, Justin Danforth to Cincinnati.
RIP, Ed Cornwell.
And yesterday was just brutal, in Edmonton and then inconceivably in Las Vegas.