Tanner Fritz has arrived. He’s back on the power play, and he might kill penalties as well. This morning at least, he was between Kieffer Bellows and Steve Bernier, with Ryan Hitchcock moved with Ryan Bourque and Scott Eansor, and with Ben Holmstrom, then, looking again like the veteran scratch.
The home opener is 24 hours away.
It was a shorter fifth line than it had been: The Sound Tigers sent Yanick Turcotte and Jeff Kubiak to Worcester. “We didn’t want to have too many guys around right now. For me, they need to play, for their development,” Brent Thompson said. “Kubiak did a good job in Hershey. Pretty solid. I thought Turky had a great camp. They need to play.”
Worcester’s opener is Saturday night in Reading, and they’ll play again there late Sunday afternoon. The ECHL season starts tonight in Newfoundland with the debut of the Growlers.
Northeastern-Sacred Heart tonight (and tomorrow night). The Huskies followed Bridgeport onto the ice this morning. Jimmy Madigan, Northeastern’s coach, reminisced a bit with Bernie Cassell about the early days of the Sound Tigers, when he was around here a bit. A few Sound Tigers knew Huskies and were chatting in the hallway. And of course there’s alumnus John Stevens. Seth Helgeson wanted to know if Stevens was giving the pregame speech tonight.