Last Wednesday night/Thursday it was discovered that for the first time in the 70 year+ history that an AHL team was involved in a serious accident. The Albany River Rats were on their way home from their game in Lowell against the Devils. Their bus broke down and they had to wait 2 1/2 hours for a replacement bus. Several members of the team were seriously hurt. While most members of the team were released from the hospital, one remained until yesterday. He joined the team and they were all happy to see him.

The next day, the Rats were scheduled to play the Sound Tigers in Albany. That game as well as Sunday’s game was canceled for the obvious reasons. Tonight, for the first time the Rats take the ice to face the Sound Tigers, only this one is in Bridgeport.

Most fans are planning to give the Rats a warm reception, at least until the puck drops.

In other Sound Tiger news, the team is currently on a 5-0-0-2 streak and slowly creeping towards the WBS Penguins and the Hershey Bears. This up coming weekend, the Tigers will play a home and home against the Penguins. These are the last 2 regular season games this year they will play.

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Well, the Sound Tigers returned home after a disappointing 1-2 road trip in Norfolk and Philadelphia. After dropping into 4th place, the Sound Tigers managed a 4-3 thriller over the San Antonio Rampage,  at the Arena at Harbor Yard. The win moved the team 1 point ahead of the Binghamton Senators into third place.

San Antonio took the lead during the first period on a goal against Tobais Stephan, a conditioning goalie from the Dallas Stars. The Tigers would tie the game at 1 later in the first period. The Rampage took a 2-1 lead in the second period and kept that lead into the 3rd period.

The Rampage then took a 3-1 lead about 4 minutes into the 3rd. During the period,  the Sound Tigers failed to capitalize on a couple of Rampage penalties. For the first time in at least 10 games, Jamie Fraser lit the lamp to cut the San Antonio lead to 3-2 at the 12:07 mark. The teams then hit center ice for a face off which the Sound Tigers won. Just 8 second later, Jeremy Colliton lifted a gorgeous shot up and over the Rampage goalie and just into the net for the tying goal.

Finally, we were sent home very happy as Mike Iggulden scored on the power play in overtime. With the win, the Tigers not only gain points on Binghamton, but Hershey lost as well. The WBS Penguins however did win last night, so the Tigers still trail them by 6 points in the standings.

Thanks for reading and see you Friday.

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Once again the Bridgeport Sound Tigers continue to slump in putting the puck in the net. For the third time in about 8 days the Sound Tigers played the Portland Pirates, only this game was in Bridgeport. Last week in Portland Maine, the team lost games of 1-0 and 2-1 with Nathan Lawson in net both times.

In front of a crowd of just over 7,000 people, the Tigers manage to score just enough to win against the Portland Pirates. The first period was scoreless, however something unusual happened. Each team was given a penalty shot and both teams came up short on the shot. From the angle where Portland was given the penalty shot, it appear to my vantage point that the puck was touched before the Pirate was tripped. On the penalty shot awarded to Bridgeport, it looked like Jeremy Colliton did not have control of the puck. Alas, he missed his chance on rookie phenom Jhonas Enroth who opposed Nathan Lawson in all 3 games in the last 8 days.

During the second period, Vladimir NikiForov opened the scoring and gave the Sound Tigers a 1-0 lead after 2 periods. In the third period, Portland tied the game on a power play goal with Pascal Morency in the box.

In the closing minute of the third period, the Tigers put a lot of pressure on the Portland Pirates in their own end. With a scramble on in front of the Portland net, Ben Walter managed to get the puck behind Enroth with only 14.4 seconds left in the third. Bridgeport gets a hard fought victory over Kevin Dineen’s fiesty Portland Pirates.

The team travels to Norfolk for 2 games against the Admirals on February 6th and 7th, then head to Philadelphia for a 5pm game against the Phantoms. This is the second to last visit in the regular season for the Tigers at the Spectrum. Next season, the Spectrum will be gone and no longer used for hockey.

The Tigers return to the Arena at Harbor Yard with a game against the San Antonio Rampage, of the Western Conference, on Wednesday February 11th.

That’s it from the  “Bridge” until Friday.

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Sorry, didn’t have a chance to post yesterday or this morning. It was not a good night for the Tigers at home Friday night. They seemed to be out played after Hershey scored the 3 and what would be go ahead goal. Nathan Lawson, the 3rd string goalie at the start of the season, is now Bridgeport’s supposed number 1 man between the pipes. Lawson, was run into during the second period by Alexandre Giroux on an apparent elbowing by Ben Walter. There were 2 soft goals let in by Lawson, but he did make some fabulous saves as the Tigers fell 7 points behind Hershey, with 2 games in hand.

After the game, the Tigers made their way to upstate NY to take on the Senators. Lawson, despite losing 2 teeth, started the game and played well. The team took an early 1-0 lead on a nice feed to Andrew MacDonald. Bingo did tie the game on a power play goal, just 17 seconds into the power play.  The Tigers took the lead on a Jesse Joensuu goal and never lost the lead again.

The team will return home tonight for an early 1pm start at the arena where they have only lost 4 games all season. Come support the team as they take on the WBS Penguins. A win against the Pens, would give them at least a 4 point lead over them in the standings.

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Well, I didn’t hear much of this game on the road. The team took a 1-0, but that’s pretty much all the Tigers had. They ended up losing 4-1 to the Providence Bruins in Rhode Island. Peter Mannino playing his first game since the end of December, struggled as Providence got 3 behind him, while 1 was an empty netter.

Trevor Smith scored his first NHL goal on January 8th against the Flames. Shortly after the game he was sent back to Bridgeport along with Yann Danis.

Tonight the Bridgeport Sound Tigers are back home at 7pm against the Hartford Wolfpack. It is another Islanders/Rangers matchup, AHL style.

Hope to see you there.

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Last night the Sound Tigers played host to the Houston Aeros. This was the Aeros first visit to Harbor Yard in nearly 5 years. The game started a bit slow, but the Sound Tigers managed to take a 1-0 after 1 period on a goal by Kurtis McLean (who was passed over for the all-star game).  Sound Tigers came out in the second period and did score a nice goal by Ben Walter to give the Tigers a 2-0 lead.

Now, in the 3rd period, McLean struck again just 10 seconds into the period. From what Mike Fornabaio of the CT POST (Their beat writer), this goal was the fastest goal in the regular season in team history to start a period. Vladimir Nikiforov, who was recently called up with the rash of injuries, took a boarding major. This was discussed by many of us after the game. While the boarding call was the right call, it did not look like a major to many fans. The referee, Terry Koharski obviously so it as a major. On that major, Houston set another record according to Mr. Fornabaio of scoring 3 goals in 82 seconds. Eventually the game went to a shootout where Bridgeport goalie Yann Danis (Now going back to the Islanders) stopped all 4 shots and Bridgeport got 2 of 3 goals to win the game.

Please visit Mike at his blog as well as this blog from a fans prospective.

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So yeah, I’m a little late.  I apologize, and now that hockey season is just around the corner and now that my life is back in order I’ll be here more often.  I promise!  But thank you to those who congratulated me on the new job.  And for those who have asked, I am a new Teacher Assistant for a 5th grade class.  It’s my first year and a whole new foray for me, so all the luck is appreciated.

So as I start new beginnings, it’s a new beginning in the hockey world, especially down in Bridgeport where the Sound Tigers seem to have a new look, not just player-wise, but looks wise as well, sporting those new fancy RBK-edge unis.  To be honest, I never really liked those EDGE jerseys when they first started, but now I’m starting to like them more and more.  They look very svelte (I’ve always been looking for an excuse to use that word!) and some just look very very good on the players.  There have been a few bad apples in that group (VANCOUVER Canucks from Vancouver from British Columbia known as the Canucks anyone?)

Starting tomorrow, I’m going to start to do a position by position preview of our Bridgeport Sound Tigers with probably the most likely players that are going to look like they’ll make the team.  Hell, I may do it when I get back from work, but that’s what you’ll be seeing next.  Until then, I’m off to school…

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Well guys, I’ll be leaving for Europe in about two hours, so just wanted to stop by and say I’ll be gone for the next week and a half-two weeks.

So be good!

See you then!

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