Great deal

They say it can take years to evaluate a trade, but there was an obvious decision tonight, one that only took a couple of days shy of two months.

Know who won that Mark Hartigan and Joe Motzko for Curtis Glencross and Zenon Konopka trade? Easy: the Sound Tigers.

The ever-petrifying Hartigan and Motzko don't score against Wade Dubielewicz and Bridgeport. (That fourth-round pick doesn't score, either.) And meanwhile four and a half hours away, noble Konopka has two points and Glencross has three, including the winner 8:45 into the third, as Albany misses out on one of the four that looked easy. (Apparently not.)

Dubielewicz shines all night. The defense gets it done. They play picture-perfect hold-the-lead hockey for the final five minutes and make it look easy. And all of a sudden they've got margin for error again.

It's an incredibly slim margin, make no mistake. But two points is two points.

LINEUPS
BRIDGEPORT
F: Magowan-Nielsen-Regier
Galbraith-G. Johnson-Marjamaki
Pitton-J. Johnson-McCaffrey
Comeau/Rourke (A)
D: Berry ('A')-Wood
Fraser-Wotton (C)
Malec-VanBallegooie

PORTLAND
F: Keith-Wirtanen-Melin
Miller-Hartigan (A)-Motzko (A)
Wilson-Carter-Ferguson
Gillies-(Hoffman-scratch)-Hynes
D: Amadio-Rome (A)
Salcido-Weinrich
Blanchard-O'Brien

Yep, Berry phantom-A'd it, and Rourke stepped right in on defense as usual. I had VanBallegooie for one shift. Comeau usually played the left in that Magowan spot, though Magowan played plenty, and effectively. The lines didn't stay particularly consistent, playing with 10 forwards.

Not that Bridgeport needed him, but did Tambellini play today?

Will probably do a Colliton story for Tuesday, but here's the gist, from our conversation tonight: They didn't think it was a tear until he sat out after the eight-in-10; he was ready to play that next Friday but felt bad Thursday. When he still felt bad in practice, they did an MRI. That's when they said he had tendinitis, but it did reveal a tear (indeed, labrum). They decided to try rest first, but that was not doing anything, so they did the MRI again and got the same thing. Surgery could come as early as Friday.

It's getting to that time of year when you say weird things like, "If the Sound Tigers go 6-6 to finish, Philadelphia has to go 10-0 to catch them... and hope Albany doesn't go 7-4 or better at the same time."

Fun typo in that ALB-SYR game: Szwez for cross-checking at 3:45 of the first, and Szwez for roughing at 5:00 of the first. That would be weird. (Thanks to Lindsay Kramer for the typo confirmation.)

Portland is the only team in the Eastern Conference that could still finish anywhere from first to last in its division. (Not that that means much: They sure won't finish last.)

Forgot to mention yesterday that Jamie Johnson had a five-point game in the Coast a couple of years ago.

Here's how the Hockey Rodent affected the NHL Eastern Conference playoff race. Or claims to, anyway.