One note per save

Once again, I hope this post goes home shortly. Thanks for your patience.

Billy Thompson stopped 33 Binghamton shots -- a game's worth, one might say -- before the Senators finally solved him. Here's one random thought per stop:

1) Bridgeport's out of last place on the power play. Yeah, really: All the way up to 25th. The percentage jumped from 13.8 to 14.4 today.

2) The power play has scored in six games in a row, a decent accomplishment for a unit that has had long stretches without results. Jack Capuano talked today about putting Mark Wotton on that top unit with Nilsson and Boguniecki and Regier, because he gets the puck to the net. He did it on two of the three power-play goals.

3) Naturally, we had to go to Capuano because Wotton wasn't going to talk about himself in anything close to positive terms, even indirectly. It's an admirable trait that, y'know, aggravates a writer.

4) Thompson said he did have it on his mind that Binghamton had beaten him twice, and he wanted to get one. He seemed more concerned about his own teammates than his old teammates, and the gamer leads with that.

5) This is the ninth time Bridgeport has scored a power-play goal in as many as six consecutive games. The 2003-04 team scored a PPG in nine in a row early in the season; the first two teams both made it to eight once.

6) That nine-game streak -- Nov. 9-29, 2003 -- included 11 goals on 49 chances, but they were 0-for-5 at five-on-three, with all five chances at least 29 seconds. It would never have become a streak if Brandon Smith hadn't scored in overtime in the second game after Burke Henry cross-checked Blaine Down in the nose.

7) The weird stat continues: Bridgeport is 16-1-2 (old calendar) when the crowd is announced above 6,700. Today's 6,884 added a win.

8) As mentioned yesterday, this was Bridgeport's first five-game winning streak since Feb. 4-15, 2006. The last six-game winning streak was Nov. 5-16, 2005.

9) That Nilsson-to-Boguniecki back-door play almost worked again, same as Saturday night except at the opposite goal. Do those two guys belong here?

10) Well, that first goal came off a Nilsson turnover to ol' buddy Matt Koalska that set up Arttu Luttinen's goal. But that looked at first glance more like just something missing than a giveaway.

11) This is the 10th time in six seasons that Bridgeport has swept a three-in-three; this is the 61st time Bridgeport has played a three-in-three. It's the first time of those 10 that a shootout win was involved. They had three times collected five points in a three-in-three.

12-25) LINEUPS
BRIDGEPORT
F: Nilsson-Colliton (A)-Boguniecki
Comeau-Regier-Nolan
Marjamaki-Nokelainen-Pitton
G. Johnson/J. Johnson
D: Fata-Berry
Wotton (C)-Fraser
Malec-Rourke (A)

BINGHAMTON
F: Saurette-Ebbett (A)-Heerema (A)
Vesce (A)-Hennessy-Robins
Luttinen-Koalska-Bois
Pecker/Collymore
D: David-Hedlund
Komadoski-Cook
Rawlyk-Petruic

26) Things degenerated late, kind of out of nowhere. Fata got nicked for spearing as the empty netter went in. Rourke got smacked around, got a penalty himself and wound up getting tossed "talking" about it. And Bingo apparently wasn't happy with Berry's mixing it up with Ebbett, after the fight he had with Luttinen earlier in the season.

27) Heard 27 stitches for linesman Glen Cooke last night. Ouch.

28) Binghamton and Bridgeport are the second-to-last teams to reach 50 games played. Peoria is the only team with fewer games so far.

29) The Sound Tigers have a seven-point lead on Albany with an even number of games played. Binghamton is 18 points back: nine and a half games, for all intents and purposes, with 30 to play and only one head-to-head.

30) Mike Pignataro has a nice piece on Mark Arcobello today. The former Fairfield Prep star has stood out for Yale, too.

31) Adam Goodman -- think it was Adam, anyway -- asked one of the youth-hockey-shootout kids what he called the move he made. If the kid had said "Arthur," I'd have been the happiest man alive. (The odds were, obviously, heavily against it.)

32) Good Simpsons episode tonight. A couple of nice callbacks, one gut-busting self-parody, the voice of Natalie Portman.... You can't go wrong. Nice job by writer Don Payne.

33) The Tigers have a couple of days off to regroup here. I hope our blog site recovers, too.