Three-on-two. Power-play goal. Two-on-one. Two-on-one. Turnover into the slot.
One disaster after another tonight. Had their coach ripping their effort. Colorfully, at times, if not quite this colorfully, but still.
Another first period where they outshot Lehigh Valley tremendously. They come out down 1-0 because they don’t get a backcheck after the puck doesn’t get deep — Travis Sanheim denies Casey Bailey there — and it turns into a three-on-two and a goal 70 seconds into the game.
“It’s not that we don’t do good things,” Brent Thompson said. “At the end of the day, we make mistakes and beat ourselves.”
And offensively, another night where he says if they need 50 shots to score, they need 50. They also needed more traffic around Dustin Tokarski, who was good when he needed to be.
And even then they were just a bounce behind for half the game (and that scramble at the end of the first, when pretty sure T.J. Brennan made a couple of saves, could’ve been it). Then the Phantoms get a power-play goal, and two minutes later, Philippe Myers breaks up John Stevens’ pass for Ryan Bourque on a two-on-one and springs things the other way as Scott Eansor goes for a change… though Kyle Burroughs is up in the rush. It comes back two-on-one, and it’s 3-0.
“We don’t execute a play, and it goes back against us,” Thompson said. “Tracking. We made a bad change.
“Every guy on the ice could’ve done something better.”
They are suddenly practicing tomorrow, so more then.
….
The lines were not-too-surprisingly blenderized in the third period, then tweaked again in places. See what sticks. Nothing too strange in there, but some new combinations.
Nothing new on Josh Ho-Sang, Thompson said.
Eansor wasn’t happy with himself on the change, but physically, “I felt good. I felt like I had good legs, as I should, not being on the ice for a week.”
Elsewhere, the AHL announced two PED suspensions this afternoon.
Newsday reports on proposed lease changes for Nassau Coliseum, including removing the notorious AHL clause.
Neat stat from the NHL after Justin Faulk’s natural hat trick. And big names moving in a Kings-Senators trade.
Men’s Olympic hockey starts bright ‘n’ early in the morning over in South Korea (which is not-bright and nighttime over there). Women’s hockey has gone according to expectations; in the U.S. women’s 5-0 win over Russia, Jocelyn Lamoureux-Davidson, sister of onetime Sound Tigers PTO Mario, completed a natural hat trick with goals six seconds apart. The U.S. and Canada have clinched semifinal berths and meet for the top seed Wednesday night Eastern time.
Sacred Heart beat Air Force this afternoon at Quinnipiac in the makeup of the government-shutdown postponement last month. The Pios have won three in a row for the first time in almost three years.
And RIP, Vic Damone and Wally Moon.