Maintaining: Thursday notes

Maintenance day for Devon Toews today at (more) frigid (than usual*) Wonderland. A thing that’s been nagging him for a while, Brent Thompson said. “Want to make sure he’s ready to go for the weekend,” the coach said.

Bridgeport otherwise looked identical to last night. Stephen Gionta sees the doctor today, so we may have some clarity tomorrow about how long-term this upper-body injury will be. They had a short, good practice, and Thompson told them to get off the ice. Most of them stayed out awhile anyway.

As Alan’s been noting, Christopher Gibson’s past two games moved him into sixth on the team’s all-time wins list. Goaltending records are tricky to compare to begin with, but obviously there are the big rules changes: The Bonus Round in 2004; the third column, which was ties until 2004, shootout losses until 2014 and overtime/shootout losses since then. Still, pretty nice. In order ahead of Gibson’s 36 wins: Wade Dubielewicz, 81; Kevin Poulin, 69; Rick DiPietro, 56; Nathan Lawson, 41; Dieter Kochan, 39. Here’s the back half: Losses for a Bridgeport goalie (again with the caveat that it includes OTLs until 2014): Poulin, 70; Dubielewicz, 65; DiPietro, 45; Kochan, 36; Anders Nilsson, 33 (who had 35 wins, which Gibson passed last night) (Lawson is sixth with 30). Yeah, more games played usually lead to more wins and more losses. On the other hand: regulation losses for Gibson in Bridgeport, 17. That’s tied for 12th (with Mike Morrison and Kenny Reiter, one fewer than Billy Thompson), despite that he’s seventh among goalies in games played**. Granted, three more losses would move him into ninth. But it’d take 14 more to pass Lawson.

Elsewhere, rough news from the Rangers that Chris Kreider is out indefinitely after they found a blood clot in his right arm. The trickle-down brought Vinni Lettieri up from Hartford and, Darryl Hunt caught, Chris Langkow to the Pack from Worcester. If I missed no one, he’d be the 35th man to play for both Bridgeport and Hartford, and the 15th to do it in that order.

*-My car literally squealed this morning when I turned ‘er over. Not fun. May run a pool on when my neighbor’s pipe bursts and floods my kitchen, as it has annually.
**-Footnote since that paragraph was way too long to begin with: Dubielewicz 164, Poulin 156, DiPietro 117, Kochan 84, Lawson 83, Nilsson 75, Gibson 67.

Michael Fornabaio