There’ll be stuff in the paper tomorrow from Bracken Kearns about icing the puck and skating onto it and bad ice and, well, it was interesting stuff.
Throwing it down the ice or not, the Falcons did a couple of things that picked off the Bridgeport defense tonight: They flew the zone early and tried the stretch pass to get behind the defense, which worked almost immediately on a Dan O’Donoghue breakaway and had varying degrees of success therafter; and they took advantage when Bridgeport’s defensemen were aggressive up the ice.
“They blew (the zone) all night,” Brent Thompson said, adding quickly that it’s the defense’s responsibility to get position on the defensive side of the puck, no matter how many players go.
“Every team tries stretching guys,” Kevin Czuczman said. “It’s just awareness for us (defensemen).”
Both even-strength Springfield goals were helped along by Sound Tigers trying to make a play in the neutral zone, turning into Falcons rushes.
“One of the big things tonight was our rush reads, the way we played rushes, our gaps. We did a poor job using the blue line to our advantage,” Thompson said.
“We tried to pick pucks off, and that created short two-on-ones.”
Whether the Falcons took it to the net and got a bounce, like on the second, or whether they used that advantage to get bodies to the net and get a bounce, like on the third, they used it.
And they’ve been shut out for 121 minutes and change now.
……
Ryan Pulock left the ice in some apparent discomfort on his last shift after throwing a hit on Matthias Plachta; downplayed postgame, but we’ll keep an eye on it for tomorrow.
Quite hard, writing about the Coyotes farmhands in this game and about their old stomping grounds of Portland coming in tomorrow night, not to call tonight’s opponents “Portland.” If I did it, because I know I caught myself a couple of times, apologies.
Prescout. For the longest time I had the screencap of Rob Schremp’s deleted “game in manchester tomorrow” tweet, but I can’t find it right now, so hope you’ll settle for this.
North Branford’s Adam Erne came back strong for Syracuse tonight, and Jeff Tambellini scored. Jonathan Bernier’s conditioning stint began with a shutout in Rochester. (Backing up Bernier? check it out.)
Missouri goes for 14 in a row tomorrow at home against Wichita, then goes to Tulsa on Sunday. Not that I ever had reason to think about it before, but if you’d asked me how long to get from Kansas City to Tulsa, I would have guessed longer than four hours. Gap in my geography knowledge, no doubt.
Presented without comment on the occasion of Alex Vazzano’s first pro shutout.
From Ryan Lacey, a story on Kate Paliotta, sister of Columbus prospect Mike.
And RIP, Norman Pickering, Scott Weiland and Robert Loggia.