So that’s three games this week, and three games where someone has snapped a long scoring drought. Today, Wednesday’s guy buried three more. And the guy breaking the drought Sunday? Only scored the game-winner.
One guy can’t do it all, not if you’re going to win. They’ve had other guys chipping in. Certainly, those guys were doing things besides scoring. But when they’re putting pucks in the net on top of it?
“You expect yourself to score. They expect themselves to score,” Brandon Svendsen said. “We’re working in practice on going to the net. … Ully, he’s doing a great job. He’s going to the net, and he’s scoring goals. We got four last night. We got four tonight.”
And for the first time in 29 days, four was enough. Four was one more than enough. Svendsen helped make sure of it, blocking a shot in the last 10 seconds — unfortunately blocking it with his hand. Svendsen was hurting but said he thought he’d be OK. Anton Klementyev broke up a rush with just under seven minutes to play and had to be helped off; he was limping around the room, which is substantially more pressure than he was putting on his left ankle when he left the ice.
“There were a lot of solid efforts,” Pat Bingham said.
“I’ve been telling the guys, we can play with everybody. We weren’t taking that next step to beat anybody. Today, we did.”
The penalty kill was sharp, for the most part, except that one rush that turned into the first Manchester goal. Mikko Koskinen was pretty good. The power play only got one chance, but it made it count.
They didn’t have Dylan Reese after warmup (didn’t catch what happened; something upper body, I think). Down to five defensemen, those guys did solid work.
“We were able to dress an extra forward, and I challenged the forwards to take over the game,” Bingham said. “The forwards were trying, getting in on the forecheck, working, competing.” Guys you don’t expect to hit were hitting. Bourbeau fought. Svendsen fought when he didn’t like a hit that Muzzin put on Rob Hisey; despite the extra roughing minor Svendsen got, “those are the kind of penalties we’ll kill off any time,” Bingham said.
It all added up to a win. Remember those?
….
And given the header, my lead should have been “The end came for Bridgeport (today),” right? Hey, only 15 points back of Hartford with 24 to play.
Ullstrom’s was the 23rd hat trick (not counting Jason Krog’s in the playoffs) in team history. They seem to cluster a bit, date-wise. There have been five in April. There are two on Dec. 16 and two others within a week on either side. And now they have one on Feb. 20, Feb. 22 (Bergenheim’s four, 2006) and Feb. 23 (Hunter, 2003). What does that mean? Nothing. Sorry. Thanks for reading.
Bingham had lots of praise for Ullstrom: “He’s been playing quite well even when he wasn’t producing. His play without the puck, his faceoffs, his D-zone coverage, everything he’s doing.”
Nice BBC piece on the history of “Mack the Knife“. Brecht, Weill, Lenya, Darin, Fitzgerald, Armstrong, Gollum, and a content warning out front**. Tell me how you go wrong. (Limited time only, BTW.)
Rediscovered while poking around YouTube for the Gallant-Rechlicz fight (OK, just killing time): And why can’t we understand Dutch? (I imagine this is what it’s like to be on drugs. Everything looks and sounds familiar, but it doesn’t quite sound right.)
Team’s off tomorrow. See you Tuesday. We’ll have a chat at 1:30 as usual.
*-Seriously, I saw that headline so many times in four years of college that it’s simply my default. Sorry.
**-Which I’m just gonna assume is for the Marxism, not the murder and mayhem.