- Who, when, whatever: Bears at Sound Tigers, Arena at Harbor Yard, Bridgeport, 7 p.m.
- Watch: AHLTV pay-per-view
- Listen: Mixlr audio
- Twitters: Alan / the Sound Tigers / the Bears / Zack Fisch / ehh me too why not
- Box score: Yep (R: Hersey, Schlittenhardt; L: N.Briganti, Pincus)
- Game notes: We were at a pretty entertaining high school game on Wednesday, not really paying attention to the Sound Tigers, yet every time we alt-tabbed over, it felt like there was another goal on the board. Heck, we arrived at Northford to find out that Lehigh Valley had already changed goalies back in Bridgeport. Chaos. Crazy. And a loss for the home team to end that modest four-game point streak. They will try again tonight with a few changes. Otto Koivula and Andrew Ladd were called up. Kieffer Bellows was sent down, though he isn’t in tonight. Nick Schilkey returns after missing seven games; Thomas Hickey returns after missing 31, and now 41 for the season; with the extra lefty in the lineup for the first time in a while, Sebastian Aho moves to the right. And maybe most notably, Cal Clutterbuck is here on a conditioning stint, two months after he took a skate to the wrist. He’ll fit right in: Recall that the AHL played 80-game regular seasons until 2010-11. That year, the Sound Tigers lost 30 man-games to injury in their last four games, taking the franchise-record total down to 350 man-games lost to injury for the first 76 games of the regular season. Tonight’s game will make it 367 for this year’s team. In Game 55.
- Meh, what else is going on: The NWHL’s Connecticut Whale played this afternoon. Good show. We advanced it in yesterday’s papers with thoughts from a few people involved and will have a story in the paper tomorrow/online later. (Here’s the weekly rail stuff, some of which was out of date before I even tweeted it.) Meanwhile, Norfolk is unceremoniously out of Holmstroms: Ben was traded to Cincinnati on Thursday, and Josh has apparently been traded (unannounced) as well. Also, former future Sound Tiger Jared Spurgeon became the NHL’s 12th defenseman ever to record a natural hat trick. Crazy.
- Did you suddenly have a weird little question pop into your head at like 6 p.m. last night: Yeah: Would Parker Wotherspoon still wear No. 27 come this morning? He does, apparently, for what it’s worth. The Sound Tigers quietly removed the Islanders’ retired numbers from their rotation in the Great Renumbering of 2016 (not even its unofficial name). Perhaps John Tonelli’s waits for the summer. (Butch Goring’s is not in danger here. Three Sound Tigers wore 91 in 2007-08 — Olivier Labelle, Pierre-Luc Faubert, and Windsor’s Keith Johnson — but never before or since, and after the high numbers disappeared in 2016, it seems as if it’d take regime change to bring them back.) There aren’t a lot of options for change, either. Of numbers under 40, only 18 (which Clutterbuck has for now) and 32, both recently vacated by trades, are unassigned, whether to guys actually here or guys elsewhere in the organization. (Well, and presumably theoretically 4. Mitch is missed.) Would they let Wotherspoon stretch up to 47 to keep a 7 in his number, like he told us a month ago? (Wait, 1’s available. But that’d be weirder.)
- Bridgeport scratches, like it’s an old-school pregameblog (presumed healthy unless noted): Soderstrom (lower), Cornell, Bellows, Bernier (inj.), Bourque, Brown (lower), Fritz (lower)
- RIP, Sy Sperling, Larry Tesler and Pete Babando.
- If this were a regular blog post, what word or phrase would most likely follow “More” at this point: Tomorrow
- Happy anniversary. You too.
BRIDGEPORT
F: Schilkey-St. Denis-Clutterbuck
Lorito-Kubiak-Wahlstrom
Holmstrom-Carpenter-McDonald (A)
Jobst – Bardreau – Ho-Sang
D: Wotherspoon-Burroughs (C)
Hickey-Aho
Helgeson (A)-Hutton
(Cornell-scratch)
G: Gibson
Coreau
HERSHEY
F: Snively-Maillet-Moulson (A)
Malentsyn-Pilon-Leason
O’Brien (A) – Pinho – Jonsson-Fjallby
Kessy-Gersich-Williams
D: Fehervary-Djoos
Alexeyev-Lewington (A)
Nardella-Burgdoerfer
G: Vanecek
Copley