Slow gun: Scrimmage notes

Scrimmages are scrimmages. You get glimpses, flashes, and you remind yourself it’s June 29 and they’re playing four-on-four. If you didn’t know Josh Ho-Sang was fun to watch before, guess you figured it out. (It was quite possible they were getting in line for autographs, or they had somewhere to be, or they just got sick of four-on-four… but after Ho-Sang’s team played the first two periods of the scrimmage and was done until the skills contest, coupla-hundred people weren’t in the stands for the third.) They even ended the way a lot of Bridgeport practices do, with a seven-puck breakaways drill (one breakaway at a time, to clarify, but first team to put away all seven pucks wins).

But there was one pretty cool bit late in the evening.

The hardest-shot contest was a dud early on. Guys were shooting pucks that, by the gun’s reading, wouldn’t have gotten pulled over on the Meadowbrook. Devon Toews said he and Ross Johnston were watching and thought that shots to the right side were registering a little higher.

That’s where the gun was, not right behind the net. Johnston and Marty Reasoner said to just aim for the gun.

Toews stepped up and bombed one wide, which registered about equal to anyone else’s to date. His second was just as wide and even harder. He practically dove back into the bench.

The next guy — Petter Hansson, maybe? Got to admit I was paying only so much attention at that point — put one into the net (meh) and one into the glass (good.) The game was changed.

Speaking of games changed, I can’t decide if the new Coliseum looks more like a shiny WEDway Peoplemover or a shiny Carousel of Progress. Welcome to Tomorrowland.

I should caution you that all of this may be a fever dream and I’m actually still sitting in my car waiting to cross the Throgs Neck Bridge this morning. Holy cro. Had a long time to contemplate why they’re doubling the size of P.S. 14.

Props to the lady a couple of tables over, singing along with Donnie Brooks’ “Mission Bell” today at Borrelli’s. I walked in to Arthur Alexander’s “Anna,” which was pretty solid in and of itself.

Fantastic. (Hat tip: Paul Lukas.

And RIP, Dave Semenko.

Michael Fornabaio