Big game hunter

Cute stuff in the morning story from Dieter Kochan, whose journey back to Bridgeport took him from Russia to a Russian hospital to home to Portland. He was good. He was typical. Bridgeport wishes it had tested him more, but the Sound Tigers needed to be better with the puck. Too many mistakes at bad times.

And yes, this is a short post-mortem. Wasted all my material in the afternoon.

LINEUPS
BRIDGEPORT
F: Bergenheim-Colliton-Nilsson
Marjamaki-Koalska-Masse
Thompson-Smith (A)-Regier
Tunik
D: Jarrett-Gervais
Macri-Flache
Rourke (A)-Pratt

PORTLAND
F: Pohanka-Perrault-Parenteau
Penner (A)-Edwardson-Shannon
Peters-Gavey (C)-Ferguson
K. Smith/Gillies (A)
D: O’Brien-Rome
Huskins-J. Smith
Smid-St. Jacques

I might have missed one late, but I had Tunik for one shift.

Smid left in the second period. Kenny Smith moved back to D in the third.

Collins’ back flared up. He was listed on the lineup, but he didn’t even take warmup. Hamilton has a sore hip flexor. Both were termed doubtful for the game coming up in about 14 hours.

And Chris Madden has basically been ruled out for the season. A note on it in the morning.

Three quick updates (two quick, one statistically overwrought) overnight: 1) Misspelled Joel Perrault’s name twice in the box score (turned him into Gil Perreault). Humblest apologies. Your pal, Mike Fornabio.

2) Sean Bergenheim extended a scoring streak to six tonight (6-4-10).

3) Portland becomes the first franchise to sweep back-to-back season series at Bridgeport. The Bucs won a pair of 3-2 games last year after they split in Portland earlier in the season. In fact, if you count overtime and shootout losses as straight-up losses, the Sound Tigers are right at this very second on their three longest head-to-head _losing_ streaks in team history: Hartford (six, all this year, 0-4-0-2), Norfolk (five, all this year, 0-4-1-0) and Portland (five, back to last year, 0-4-1-0). (I would argue to count the SOLs as ties for historical continuity, which cancels Hartford, but the OTLs as losses, which keeps Norfolk and Portland. Either way, Bridgeport has lost four in a row in regulation to Norfolk and Portland, which ties the team record: the last four to Binghamton in 2003-04, and all four against Winnipeg in 2002-03.)

Michael Fornabaio