Punch in the gut

Hershey came back from 3-0 down to beat Wilkes-Barre/Scranton on Alex Giroux's goal in double-overtime. The Bears are up 2-0 with Game 3 tonight up I-81 in Wilkes-Barre. This isn't the time of year to ask why Giroux, who tied the game with 7:29 to go, is in this league, so let's just say he shouldn't be in this league next year. Robert Nilsson had two assists and picked up the third star.

Iowa came back strong in Game 2 and beat Chicago 5-4. Paul Szczechura, a rookie out of Western Michigan, scored twice, with the second proving to be the winner.

So Captain Non Grata notched a hat trick in the second period as Canada came back to beat Belarus 6-3. The Russians wrecked Italy's run at the medal round.

It seemed to me that teams who have scored first in this thing have gone on to lose at an abnormal rate, but that's wrong. In the AHL the last few years pre-shootout, teams scoring first had about a .680-.690 winning percentage, give or take. (In the shootout era, that's up to about .730.) Teams scoring first in Russia this spring have won 21 of the 30 prelim- or qualifying-round games. That's .700.

There were relegation-round games today, but we'll worry about them when someone gets ranked down to No. 17.

Meanwhile, I've been linking a ton off the Variety RSS feed lately, but gotta post this one about Robert De Niro and Bridgeport.