They’re walkin’ here: St. John’s postgame

Baby steps,” Brent Thompson said. He pointed out that, when the IceCaps had odd-man rushes, it wasn’t as much from defensemen pinching in the offensive zone, as it had been in past games; it was more a matter of losing coverage in the neutral zone. They gave up a lot of shots, but they were also blocking lots of shots, and a lot of those shots were either on or came out of St. John’s power plays.

Baby steps: Alan Quine comes back. He looks good. He changes the dynamic of the power play; there was one in the third period where it looked as if he’d fed Carter Verhaeghe for the cross-ice winner. He did feed Ryan Pulock for a shot that squeaked through Zach Fucale for an Andrew Rowe tap-in.

“I felt good. At first you’re a little tense, but as the game went on, I got more comfortable. I could feel I was ready.”

There was one moment, though, where he went down a little awkwardly and skated to the bench looking uncomfortable… Quine smiled kinda sheepishly. He fell that time on the uninjured leg. “No excuses,” he said.

Baby steps: J.F. Berube comes back. There were early nerves, but he got plenty of work. “I feel 100 percent,” he said. “Maybe just game shape. There’s nothing like a game. … I’m not too worried about my conditioning.”

Baby steps: There’s work to do, a ways to go, but Thompson felt they had a commitment to what they were trying to do, not trying to do too much and playing a defense-first kind of game. It’s a win. Two points and all. They haven’t gotten one of them in regulation yet this month, but still, it’s two points. It’d been a while.

……

Kinda scary moment in the first period as a Ryan Pulock shot came up and hit Mike Halmo, who was bleeding pretty good before he was hustled off. Dave, who has the best angle on guys departing, said this. Halmo was being worked on after the game and wasn’t available, but he came back to play in relatively short order.

Brian Rogers pointed out at the start of the third that Victor Bartley was missing from the IceCaps’ bench. Hope he’s OK.

John Scott got a nice hand from a few people when Ben Holmstrom slashed his stick out in the third period. Our old buddy Pat Pickens was here today to write about him for the New York Times, and Pat tweeted this after regulation. I mumbled over, “it’s a development league.”

Prescout. Assuming this storm doesn’t bury us or drown us first.

The Jonathan Drouin situation took one heck of a weird turn tonight. (Video autoplays.) Admirals Roundtable put together a fine list of things Drouin can do now that he’s not playing.

Veteran Brian McGrattan was knocked out last night by onetime (literally) Sound Tigers defenseman Daniel Maggio in a game in San Antonio. Thankfully, McGrattan is by all accounts OK. David M. Singer on HockeyFights.com talked to Maggio about it (h/t: @IslesEnforcers).

Here’s your AHL All-Star TV schedule (tl;dr: MSG and NESN (NESNplus for the game itself)).

Is there a ninth planet? Interesting stuff.

And finally, in what may’ve been the most impressive accomplishment of the night:

Michael Fornabaio