To sort-of steal a line from Bracken Kearns, 10 games ago, who knows how this turns out. They’re down 2-0 early, then again by a goal after they erase that deficit.
“We stayed with it,” Ben Holmstrom said. “It wasn’t the prettiest game we’ve played, but we stayed in it. We’ve been better at that lately. Up a goal, down a goal, we’re still playing the right way.”
The fourth line gave them a few really good shifts. They took advantage when the Phantoms turned the puck over. They kept the pressure on.
“Little things that turn into winning things. The wall battles at the end, Verhaeghe,” Brent Thompson said. “Guys are all buying in.
“Hopefully we continue to grow,” he added. “It’s just going to get harder.”
And then there’s what their veteran centerman pulled out at the end.
……
Bracken Kearns gets his first AHL hat trick at 34, in his 563rd game, with his 132nd goal. Pretty cool. He and Danick Martel are the first opponents with hat tricks in the same AHL game in almost two years; Jason Chaimovitch checked to make sure that, indeed, it’s the first time that has happened in a Bridgeport game.
It’s the first time Bridgeport has had hat tricks in back-to-back games, though there were hat tricks in back-to-back home games once, in April 2008: Jeff Tambellini (April 4, the five-point overtime-winner game against Philadelphia) and Trevor Smith (April 11 against Lowell). The following season, there were four Sound Tigers hat tricks; until tonight, that was the only Bridgeport season with four.
Kearns did have one in the Coast as a rookie.
Danick Martel gets his first AHL hat trick (as a pro, even), by contrast, in his 44th game. There’s still only one Bridgeport hat trick in a loss.
Prescout. Funny to think they played twice in a little over a week to start the season and haven’t seen each other since. Steve Oleksy with his first of the year tonight.
The Capitals sent Aaron Ness back to Hershey. We’ll see about next week.
Twin girls for Danielle and John Scott.
Doug Bonjour went to Yale tonight to write about Brandon Sherrod and his 30 makes in a row and his pretty neat story. Though for me the story is “Columbia 4-1.”
And RIP, Maurice White and Edgar Mitchell.