Every line is clicking for Bridgeport. Every pair? Clicking. The power play? Good enough. The penalty kill? Incredible.
Wade Dubielewicz? Nothing further need be said.
This is as well as I’ve seen this Sound Tigers team play this year, and maybe as well as a Sound Tigers team has played since The Unbeaten Streak in 2003, goalie out.
A bounce or two could, stress could, have turned this series the other way. But the Sound Tigers do deserve this lead.
I haven’t checked this stat, got an e-mail in for further help, but Tris Wykes reported this this morning down in Norfolk:
Only 15 times in the AHL’s 70-year history has a team rallied to win a best-of-seven series after losing the first two games. Teams that win those first two have advanced 91 percent of the time.
There’s that history on their side. There’s also the other part of history, the 2004 blown playoff lead. Of course, those first two games were at home.
We’ll see what happens next, but these two games say they’re working on being something special.
LINEUPS
BRIDGEPORT
F: Bergenheim-Colliton-Nilsson
Tambellini-Collins (A)-Comeau
Marjamaki-Koalska-Masse
Papineau-Regier-Thompson
D: Jarrett (A)-Gervais
Pettinen (A)-Caldwell
Grebeshkov-Pratt
WILKES-BARRE/SCRANTON
F: Lefebvre (A)-Talbot-Filewich
Hussey-Christensen-Corupe-
Carcillo-Stone-Kolanos
Dixon-Endicott-Bonvie (A)
D: Lannon-Whitney
Welch-Kelleher (A)
Bissonnette-Fata
Dennis Bonvie had a chat with Chris Thompson in warmup. A few shrugged shoulders on one side, one little stick-whack on the other. Tame, for a Bonvie pregame meeting. He didn’t play a whole lot.
It’s two years and four days after Game 3 of the 2004 Eastern Conference quarters, and with the same referee in the same building, even before the game, I couldn’t help but think of this Greg Cronin chestnut: “I don’t know what Dean was smoking.”
Power plays were 10-3 that night. They were 9-4 tonight. Dave Baseggio wasn’t going to come out with anything like that, but you could tell he was a little perturbed, talking about how his team had to kill off more power plays than the Penguins, stuff like that.
Jonathan Filewich’s goal, I had absolutely no angle — it’s the diametric opposite end of the building — but Dubielewicz said he knew it wasn’t in, and the length of time it took to get Morton to point and the light to go on tells me he’s probably right.
A bunch of calls looked weird from up here. But at least they looked weird both ways at times.
In 24 playoff games, Rob Collins has eight goals and 13 assists. (Heck, in nine Sound Tigers playoff games, he has five goals and five assists. No one ahead of him has played fewer than 16 playoff games.)
Good bounce for the Penguins on the second goal, which Shane Endicott put to the crease, where it bounced around and in, finally, off Denis Grebeshkov, no blame there. (Good things happen, blah blah blah.)
OK, gotta get home, take a nap and get ready for Game 3… In Game 3 two years ago, the Sound Tigers took a 2-0 lead in the second period, then lost in overtime.
If you’re into that kind of history.