I mean, you have probably noticed things are different around here already. For one thing, when the heck was the last time I posted before today? The accumulated RIPs may include Lyndon Johnson.
Big news for our newspaper chain today with the arrival of CT Insider. It’s a subscription site that will house a lot of our columns, features and analysis. (Print subscribers get access, too.)
What does that mean for us here? To be determined. We have yet to determine a full course of action for covering the Sound Tigers this year, what kinds of stories we’ll be doing when, what goes where, how the blog may still play into it (especially considering the Insider). We’ll see, but as you may’ve noticed, lots of high school responsibilities for me, even more than last year.
As the ol’ blog starts its 15th season, it’s mildly painful to say that for the first time I have no idea what its future holds. But anyway, forget the future. Let’s relive the past three weeks.
Bridgeport got its first 12 players from the Islanders on Thursday. Well, its first 12 who were in Islanders camp, anyway; if I mathed right, there were four guys on AHL contracts who didn’t go to Islanders camp: J.D. Dudek, Tanner Pond, Nic Pierog and Mike Cornell. They’ll presumably be here when Bridgeport opens camp, which despite the early transactions I think is next week. (Oops, analysis. Please log in.)
That leaves, again if I count right, six AHL-contract forwards still up, including Yanick Turcotte, who the Islanders report as injured. So too are Bobo Carpenter (offseason shoulder surgery) and Mitch Vande Sompel, who went hard into the net in an early practice and was reported out “a while.”
Most of the Islanders’ names through rookie and main camp have been familiar in one way or another. The one who wasn’t really was forward Brett Neumann, who’d been on a tryout until he was returned to junior.
Elsewhere: Just 14? Darn.
With help from Jason Iacona and others, a cursory look at this year’s rules changes.
On the Insider, East Haven’s Nick Capone committed to UConn. He’d been committed to Maine for a while.
We missed (at least here) the blogiversary (yeah, Year 15, holy cro), which of course brings up sad memories from Yaroslavl. On another sad anniversary, Lance Hornby wrote about how St. John’s came through on Sept. 11, 2001.
Oh my gosh. Two Yaz…es.
RIP, John Everett, Valerie Harper, Larry Siegel, Jack Perkins, Mike Stefanik, Cokie Roberts, Chris Duncan, T. Boone Pickens, Ric Ocasek, Eddie Money and Mike Folga.
And on a day like this, it feels like a good one to say thank you for reading. See you out there somewhere.