Trying this again: Friday practice

They didn’t have him last night, but John Persson could be ready for Saturday. Scott Pellerin said he’s approaching it as if Persson will be good to go. “He’ll be playing unless something happens today or tomorrow,” Pellerin said. “We need him back in our lineup. He’s big for our team.”

Persson was with Johan Sundstrom and Kirill Kabanov today at Wonderland, home of champions. Another practice day of Hill-Watkins-Backman with the Nelson and Campbell lines as they were.

Team’s off to Glens Falls, but programming note: Good chance I won’t be in position to follow tomorrow’s game closely. Probably some kind of postgameblog at some point. You won’t miss me, though, as Phil will be there to call it, and he and Jamie will be tweeting it, as I presume will be beat writers Diana C. Nearhos and Michael Cignoli.

The number to watch — you know, aside from goals, wins, points, boring stuff like that — is that the team is at 93 fighting majors after Jordan Hill’s scrap last night. The team record is 94 in 2007-08.

Games of Import tonight for the Sound Tigers: Hershey at Albany; Syracuse at Norfolk; Manchester at Portland; Providence at Wilkes-Barre/Scranton. (Prescouting, there’s also Adirondack at Binghamton.)

And there’s another huge one at 7:35 p.m. in Oshawa. Ryan Strome and Niagara trail their first-round playoff series 3-1. An IceDogs loss and he’d be available to the Islanders or Sound Tigers. The same goes for Andrey Pedan of Guelph, whose team trails Kitchener 3-1 (but isn’t signed). Could be the last night of junior for both of them. Or they could keep playing on.

I shouldn’t count chickens, but I peeked ahead: It looks like we MAY, just MAY, get a visit soon from a certain referee we haven’t seen in a while. In a landmark Sound Tigers game, no less. Hopeful.

Meanwhile, taking over that place we usually spend a lot of time: basketball, with a sold-out barn. If you’re going, have fun.

Michael Fornabaio