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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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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