Welcome back to Worcester: Hartford (exh.) postgame 2

Fun night. Great facility. Wrote about it, Worcester and the relationship for the paper tomorrow, and hopefully will get back up here at least once or twice.

As for the game, it’s over, which is a positive.

Tongue in cheek, but they’ve made it through the exhibitions mostly intact, put together a so-so first tonight, took advantage of a bunch of Hartford mistakes and some breaks, and ran away with this one.

“I saw a lot of positives. One thing I’m really happy about is how hard we worked,” Brent Thompson said. “The exhibition games, we came in and competed very, very hard. The goaltending was solid, both guys.

“We’ve got a lot to work on. We were sloppy in aspects of our structure.”

Christopher Gibson was strong, said he felt good. If the goaltending is this sharp, they can be competitive every night for as long as it lasts.

Of course the next three days bring the last moves to get NHL teams down to 23 men, get AHL teams firming up for the weekend, get ECHL camps underway. Teams will be at full(ish) strength. Then it all begins for real.

Hartford 0 0 1—1
Bridgeport 1 4 2—2

First Period — 1, Bridgeport, Gaudreau 2 (Turcotte), 13:42. Penalties — Wotherspoon, Bpt (high-sticking), 6:07; McNally, Bpt (interference), 11:32; Gropp, Hfd (interference), 11:32; St. Denis, Bpt (interference), 19:50.

Second Period — 2, Bridgeport, Stevens 1 (Turcotte), 8:24 (sh). 3, Bridgeport, Bailey 1 (St. Denis, Stevens), 12:02 (pp). 4, Bridgeport, Johnston 1 (Kubiak, McNally), 14:37. 5, Bridgeport, Gaudreau 3 (Fritz, Helgeson), 16:02. Penalties — Fritz, Bpt (slashing), 6:40; Selleck, Hfd, major (fighting), 11:27; Turcotte, Bpt, major (fighting), 11:27; Crawley, Hfd (slashing), 11:42; Johnston, Bpt (roughing), 16:19.

Third Period — 6, Bridgeport, St. Denis 1 (Burroughs, Bailey), 1:14. 7, Bridgeport, St. Denis 2 (McNally), 13:42. 8, Hartford, Catenacci 1 (DeSalvo, Schneider), 17:07. Penalties — Aho, Bpt (slashing), 6:43.

Shots on goal — Hartford 9-10-12—31. Bridgeport 10-16-6—32.

Power play opportunities — Hartford 0 of 6, Bridgeport 1 of 2.

Goaltenders — Hartford, Halverson 0-1-0 (26 shots-21 saves), Georgiev (start third, 6-4). Bridgeport, Gibson 1-0-0 (31-30).

Attendance — 565. Referees — T.Koharski, Miller. Linesmen — T.Whittemore, Leavitt.

It’s probably not worth even typing these; not the A lineup, other guys will be on their way within days, so on. But ehh. PP1 had Johnston, Stevens, St. Denis, Bailey and Aho, setting up Bailey one-timers from the top of the left circle (one of them went, with Johnston in front). The other had Fritz, Schempp, Gaudreau, Bourque and McNally. They used at least 10 forwards and five defensemen at different times on the penalty kill, depending who was in the box.

Two breakaway leads and a fight for Yanick Turcotte.

The only downside to the facility was where we wound up watching the game, which gave us a good view of one end but a lot worse of the other. For instance, at 3-0, Gibson made a save that had the bench cheering: At the other end, Darryl Hunt saw it like this. For what it’s worth, Gibson said it was routine, not that I’d expect Gibson to be too excited about an exhibition-game save, but anyway. Either way, moments later it was 4-0. That kind of night.

Team’s not skating Sunday. Possible we hear word on moves; then again, they might wait until Monday*. We’ll see.

And RIP, Monty Hall.

*Save up to $300 or more.

Michael Fornabaio