Part of it is the reunion, Connor Jones said, as he and Kellen reunite to join HC Thurgau in Switzerland.
Part, also, is the challenge. Their new team is looking for them to create offense.
It’s a little bittersweet, he agreed, leaving Bridgeport. “I’ve got nothing but great things to say about Bogy, Tommer,” he said. He wound up playing more games than anyone but six Sound Tigers. Not bad for a PTO, I said, and he remembered barely playing at the start, scratched for the first seven games of 2015-16, earning his way in. He earned it to stick around. He earned an NHL call-up off that AHL deal.
“I don’t know if a lot of people get to say, ‘I did everything I possibly could to get there,'” he said.
Either way, bit of an end of an era. That 2015-16 playoff team turned over a bunch of players, and that Jared Gomes-Jones-Colin Markison line kind of epitomized what this team was about: speed, grit, create a little, annoy the living daylights out of you, kill the penalty and go back to work. Kellen Jones-Connor Jones-Josh Holmstrom was similar. Jones began this year between Michael Dal Colle and Josh Ho-Sang for some of the best success they had without Thomas Hickey and Andrew Ladd, then finished the year between Ryan Bourque and Stephen Gionta, keeping Hershey’s best players on a leash. He’ll be missed.
That, and the Quinnipiac Mafia’s down to one. (Also gonna need a new DJ in the room. He did good work.)
Jones would’ve been an “exempt” veteran in the AHL this year, that one guy under 320 games. Thurgau isn’t in the top Swiss division, so should he come back at some point, games he plays for them won’t affect that status.
Elsewhere, Jim Schoenfeld, who did just about everything at one point or another for the Rangers over the past 18 years, will no longer be with the team, the Rangers said.
Not cool, @AHLPR. Just for that, I won’t remind you that the conference finals finally start Friday night.
And RIP, I.M. Pei.