Phantoms at Bridgeport 11-23-08: Third Period

All right, we have 20 minutes to get that darn goal back. Starting... NOW.

Oh, how is ROSS going off for tripping on that play? I thought it was the Sound Tigers Dman who needed to go off... Both players fell and nobody was sure, at first, which team was about to go shorthanded. Well, whatever... If you're in the AHL, you have to play through a lot of calls that seem to make no sense. Munroe makes a GREAT save, and Matsumoto steals the puck for a shorthanded oportunity.

And if we like playing shorthanded, we'll have the opportunity to continue doing so, as we're going on a two-man disadvantage for six seconds, then Curry will fly solo in the sin bin for the reamainder of his cross-checking penalty. Syvret blocks a shot nicely, sending the play down to the Bridgeport end for a bit. There's been a lot of end-to-end play on this second PK, but eventually it came back to bite us and Sillinger assisted on yet another goal. Bridgeport now leads 4-2.

Morency's in a fight again, this time with Clackson. This is a more evenly-matched bout, size-wise, though Clackson is a bit bigger. The run-up to the fight lasted longer than the actual fight. Morency grabbed hold of the jersey and hauled Clackson off-balance and down; not much else happened in the fight, but both guys will sit for five minutes anyway. There's now a bunch of yapping going on across the scorers' table, but I'd be very surprised if this pair goes again at the end of the penalty time. Morency has already fought twice in this game; a third bout would mean an automatic game misconduct, and I don't think Morency is going to go there for no reason.

I'm surprised to see both teams skating as much as they are in this game. This the Phantoms' third game in three days, and I believe the Sound Tigers also had a three-game weekend; one would think they'd be too tired to repeatedly sprint from one end to the other. Then again, maybe that's why nobody's able to get set up or dominate the game -- maybe fatigue is a factor there. The teams have been pretty evenly matched all game long, regardless of what the numbers on the scoreboard are saying.

Clackson and Morency are skating back to their benches now at a stoppage of play, and Clackson is still giving Morency an earful. If they don't rumble again today, which I doubt will happen, we have plenty of other opportunities during the season for them to write the next chapter of the story.

The Sound Tigers called a timeout with about 3 minutes remaining, prior to a faceoff in the Bridgeport end. Paddock didn't say much to HIS troops, while the Sound Tigers strategized. The announcer wondered aloud if Paddock has a set play that he's going to run with the team. Now it's slightly more than two minutes remaining, and the Phantoms pulled the goaltender. OH, what an unfortunate time to go offside. Gah! Well, life goes on and we are going to take this opportunity to use OUR timeout.

Ross, Giroux, Maroon, Syvret, and DeSantis are on the ice for the faceoff, with Munroe between the hash marks. Munroe did leave the ice ASAP, but even though we had the extra skater on the ice, play came down to our end. Ross deflected a Bridgeport shot on goal and prevented us from falling behind by three goals. We managed to get a good flurry going in the final half-minute of the game, but time was our enemy and the final score of the game was 4-2 in favor of Bridgeport.

This was our fourth game in five days, and I think that having a few days off to recuperate will do us good. I liked that we looked evenly matched for most of this game, but I didn't like that we spent very, very little time as the team controlling the flow. Time for the team to review videos and recuperate physically from the past half-week's worth of games.