Long night, long post

Hey, good to be here

though five OTs in Albany might’ve been more fun. The Rats and Phantoms play the longest game in AHL history before Ryan Potulny finishes things at 82:58 of overtime. Michael Leighton stopped 98 out of 101 shots, 17 of ’em Kyle Greentree’s. (98. That’s kind of a shame.) Albany outshot the Phantoms 15-9 in the first period and never outshot Philly in a period again, including a 14-3 disadvantage in the third period as the Ghosts pressed for the tie. Five hours, 38 minutes.

The league lists its 20 longest OT games in the Guide ‘n’ Record Book. Not too surprisingly, of those 20 games, 15 of the winners went on to win the series. (It’s like scoring first — any win is good.) That’s even less surprising given that a lot of those games were from early in the league’s history, when there were lots of best-of-5s and even best-of-3s (maybe even two-game, total-goals, for all I can tell). For six of those 15 winners, in fact, that long-OT game ended the series.

There has only been one winner-take-all game to go longer than 42:06 of OT, though: Pittsburgh and Cleveland, the third-place teams in their divisions, went 46:15 in Game 3 of their best-of-3 league quarterfinal series*.

(There’s an interesting discrepancy between an old list of those games that I have, and the one that’s in the book now. Got an e-mail in to Springfield to check.)

The longest Sound Tigers game is a mere 38:36 of overtime, won by Juraj Kolnik in Game 3 up at St. John’s. Newfoundland is 90 minutes ahead of us, so I never thought I would have to hustle to make deadline there. But it happened.

(It gets no dumber than this: the average time of the winning goal in Bridgeport’s 14 overtime games: 11:43. The time of Konstantin Koltsov’s goal in Game 7, four years ago Friday? 11:44.)

Remember how Houston and Rockford played the longest scoreless tie in league history last week? Albany and Philly teams basically did the same thing after playing a 2-2 tie. Yeesh.

Speaking of, Houston’s working on bingo: one goal in each game, which has been good enough to win only one out of four. Chicago takes a 3-2 lead with a 4-1 win.

Petteri Nokelainen and Vladimir Sobotka were assigned to Providence. Some speculation elsewhere that Nokelainen might be a Team Finland pick for the Worlds. Phil Kessel’s playing for Team USA.

Most of Hartford is joining the Rangers. Most of the city, that is. (They carried 29 when they won in 1994 — this’d be a bit more.)

Victoria’s paper called the Grizzlies the “Sound Tigers… oops.” Funny. Christie and Colley probably wish they had gotten a ton of players from Bridgeport and more “several bright young Islanders prospects,” not just Andy-Mac and the return of the call-ups.

Have heard precisely no one talk about Kim Johansson, but I’ll ask if I get a chance. The source to which eliteprospects.com links seems to indicate more that Malmo was cutting ties, not that he was particularly going elsewhere. (But I still can’t read Swedish, so run through a cheap-as-free translator. No Babelfish, No Fun.)

And RIP, Shelton coach Ed Marocco.

Michael Fornabaio