Home cooked

Answered an e-mail Saturday night about the home-ice thing. After running through the first six, my capper at the end was something about, "The common thread, if anything, is probably ol-reliable-cliche 'playing 60 minutes.' Other than that? Maybe young team without killer instinct."

I'm not even sure about that anymore.

Seven home games without a regulation victory, in a barn that has traditionally been good to the home team. Some may talk about the crowds, but teams have won here with substantially smaller (and quieter) crowds. Some may talk about the sweaters... no, that's just me. Dan Marshall thinks maybe the kiddies are worried about what brass may be in the crowd (Bryan Trottier tonight, for instance). Hey, maybe so. But each of these games has had its own little disaster moment. Each one has happened differently.

"Maybe we've got more respect when we play away," Frans Nielsen said. "We keep to our system. We get the puck deep, skate, that kind of stuff. (At home), we do too many passes, then it's a turnover all the time."

That's kind of the theme tonight. Tonight, even while falling behind 4-0, they hit the post five times. Even while giving up two goals in the first period, they had a mad scramble in between that could have tied the game. The head-scratcher is that this has happened seven times, so it looks like a movement.

When several of these Albany players were Lowell Lock Monsters last season, Bridgeport won all eight games in the season series and didn't even trail 19 minutes out of over 480 played. It took about 25 minutes for Albany to top last year's Lock Monsters.

LINEUPS
BRIDGEPORT
F: Comeau-Colliton (A)-Regier
Nilsson-Nielsen-Boguniecki
Pitton-Ferraro-Nokelainen
Tambellini-(Ogorodnikov-scratch)-Marjamaki
D: Fata-Berry
Mitchell-Wotton (C)
Campoli-Rourke (A)

ALBANY
F: Murley-Aucoin (C)-Willis
Estrada-Guite (A)-Dwyer
Barnes-Kelman-Petruzalek
McLeod-Steeves-(Boulerice-scratch)
D: Cumiskey-Finger (A)
Love-Boychuk
Carson-Conboy

No postgame update on Drew Fata, who left in the second period after getting dumped to the side of the net, it appeared on replay. Saw him walking out under his own power, though.

Providence and Portland did their part for the AHL last night; for the NHL, Kevin Paul Dupont of the Boston Globe (cap tip to Patrick Williams) has just a modest request today: bring back fighting:

Think anyone down here in the Lower 50 today would turn away from one of the buckets o'blood we witnessed in the early '70s? Can you imagine the ratings that something like the Bruins' first-round sweep of the Maple Leafs in 1969 -- Pat Quinn's likeness hanged from the second balcony after his hit on Bobby Orr -- would bring today? Absolute guarantee: that kind of NHL would not be on the Vs. network. No, sir. We'd be watching that kind of hockey strictly via pay-per-view. And the third period might cost more than the first.

And finally, it is, of course, always good to see Ben Guite. Someone dropped off for him a 1976-77 New England Whalers program from a game against Cincinnati, a team that included Ben's dad, Pierre. Pretty neat.