Tough one. If not quite seeming to be in hand, they seemed to be on their way, at least. The Crunch, two men short in the third, made Bridgeport look like the team that rode the bus four hours last night to play a three-in-three.
Seth Helgeson said it felt like they played a solid team game for the last two periods last night and again the first two tonight. “The third, we obviously lost it there,” he said. Nothing to show for it. “It’s tough. We can’t dwell on it. We’ve got to continue rolling on.”
It is not an excuse, obviously, and unlike some Bridgeport teams in the past, the replacements are not whoever they can find in whatever corner of the continent; they signed some depth and are running it out pretty good now. But this team is missing about 70 percent of the power play right now in some form or another.
It’s still competitive. It took a lead to the third period tonight. It couldn’t hold on. Self-inflicted, Brent Thompson said.
“Our team works hard. You see how hard they work on a regular basis,” Thompson said. “We just beat ourselves. Much like last night, we handed them a couple of goals.”
“Little mistakes,” Helgeson agreed.
The game-winner, there’s a shot from the blue line wide, and there’s Dennis Yan to wrap it around.
“I think we kind of lost track of it,” Helgeson said. “I don’t know if it went off my stick, Gibby’s glove, what happened.
“That’s the game-winner. That’s tough.”
….
They’ll at least come in tomorrow morning, so more then. Thompson said no significant updates on the injured/ill tonight. Didn’t see Josh Ho-Sang yesterday but did today, in passing in the hallway. We accidentally exchanged pleasantries.
See the note in the paper for where St. Denis’ goal off the faceoff came from.
Didn’t see Stephen Gionta postgame but worried he was done midway through the game when he got double-teamed at the Crunch blue line. Stayed in and played a regular shift.
With the lost weekend, Bridgeport is four points behind Charlotte with a game in hand, and two behind Hartford but with two games in hand that’ll keep it above the Wolf Pack in the percentage-based standings. Providence’s shootout win over Wilkes-Barre puts the third-place Bruins eight ahead of the Sound Tigers.
Three points for Joe Whitney in his second Hershey game, including a goal in OT.
Tip of cap to Yann Danis. A fine career with a good stop-off here.
An interesting story from Popular Science on Babe Ruth‘s cancer treatment. (H/t Darryl Hunt.) (And yeah, kids*, we used to not say the word “cancer.” And now we have pink rink nights. Amazing. And a good change, generally.)
And RIP, Jim Garrett, who for me will always be the Columbia coach who compared his team to “drug-addicted losers.”
*-While I waited fruitlessly before the game for Thompson to poke his head out of the room, an assortment of ’80s music was playing: “Pink Houses,” “Dirty Laundry,” “Boys of Summer.” And while singing along quietly I tried to figure out how many Sound Tigers had actually been born when those songs came out. Elementary school for me.