West Haven to Germany

Spoke to Eric Boguniecki the other day, and he said he was weighing some European offers. Well, appears he's picked one: ERC Ingolstadt has announced his signing.

Not that he was coming back, anyway. It appears the Islanders don't plan to bring back any of the unrestricted free agents. The shopping list is extensive, but they hope to strike quickly.

Patrick Williams presents his top 20 AHL UFAs.

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Herbert Vasiljevs feature on the DEL site. Babelfish is always fun.

(Apologies if this posts twice.)

High-traffic areas

Spent four and a half hours in the car today to get to and from the Island. Must have chosen every single wrong road. Here's how messed up it was: In both directions, the only road on which I didn't slow down? The Long Island Parking Lot Expressway.

So I missed the first session, which included Kyle Okposo. Saw him in street clothes afterward, and darn, the kid is huge; built. And Kimber Auerbach said Okposo put on a move in the shootout so good that Kimber was surprised he could even describe it, let alone Okposo do it: not doing it justice, backhand fake shot, to forehand, back to backhand and roof it. Gah. This is when you quote Charles Barkley: "An education is a wonderful thing, unless you can run and jump over houses."

Drew Fata was in that first group, too. Kimber says he's going to put him on the new Sound Tigers TV this year: "Chewin' the Fat with Fata." Drew's into it.

Wrote on Dustin Kohn, the other big prospect in that group. Yes, even without seeing him. The group I did see included Tambellini, Nokelainen, Comeau, MacDonald, Mole, Fraser. They looked fine. Tambellini's a cut above in this camp, probably everybody up front except maybe Okposo.

Also noted Masi Marjamaki and Jeremy Colliton, who skated on the side sheet, and it was their first skates since the surgeries. Didn't get to talk to Marjamaki, but he looked pretty fluid to me. Colliton looked OK, too; he's been working on the shoulder, but the upper-body strength necessarily falls off when you've got a shoulder immobilized. Still, it's a step forward. Marjamaki is hoped to be good to go for camp; Colliton might still need some re-strengthening.

Full BST house: Capuano, Bingham, Cassell, Sullo, new arrival Mike Burkhead. Howard Saffan was upstairs, but I missed him. Garth Snow and Ted Nolan were around. Daniel Lacroix and Bryan Trottier led the session I saw; Dan Flynn was still there, too.

Met Peter Ferraro in the lobby. (Fortunately, he recognized me, 'cause I was still spacy from the drive.) He had his camp after the Islanders' camp ended. He is waiting to see what the next few weeks will bring. He was very happy with his brother's season in San Antonio.

It was nice to be around hockey. It was nice to be around hockey people. It was nice to be in a rink on the hottest day of the year, especially since our air conditioning broke down Tuesday night.

Will hopefully make it down for at least one scrimmage session... and will hopefully choose better roads.

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Lunch on the road, never smart. The bill was $6.57. Had time to dig for pennies; paid $10.07. Got four singles as change. Handed back one of the singles and said she had given me too much; it was only 50 cents more. She gave me 32 cents. I blinked and said, now it's not enough; 50 cents. She gave me two quarters. I am still trying to figure that one out.

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If someone came up to me and needed to know what it meant to be a fan, I might briefly recap the 2006 baseball season, then show them this post from Greg Prince.

Flair from the draft

Some interesting kids among the Islanders' draft picks... Maxim Gratchev comes from Billerica with a much more interesting backstory in Russia. (The Isles' Web site twice calls him a guy "with flare." Pyrotechnics optional.) And Blake Kessel, little brother of Phil, came to the Islanders at 166.

Boston traded up to take Tommy Cross of Simsbury early in the second round; San Jose grabbed Farmington legend Nick Bonino in the sixth, and Drew MacKenzie of New Canaan went to Buffalo near the end of the seventh. By the way, know what's weirder than kids you covered in high school playing pro hockey? Kids you covered in junior Babe Ruth playing pro ball.

Draft composite

On behalf of all of us here at Soundin' Off, I would like to thank the people of Columbus for their generous hospitality. We're especially thankful to the Columbus Blue Jackets, the hosts for this wonderful evening, and all their staff, whom we'll not mention by name, although we want them to know we would. We'd like to congratulate the Anaheim Migh... the Anaheim Ducks on their recent Stanley Cup championship, and the Ottawa Senators on being the runner-up, and Buffalo and Detroit for being the runners-ups to the finalists, and to the other 12 playoff teams, and to the other 14 teams, our congratulations for competing so hard. We'd like to congratulate the Hamilton Bulldogs for winning the Calder Cup, and the Hersheypark Happies for coming close to another one, and to the other 14 playoff teams, and 10 of the 11 non-playoff teams. (we're not really allowed to congratulate that one, are we? Anyway.) We'd like to also offer our condolences to Hamilton on the loss of your NHL team. We'd like to thank all the fans for their support, especially all you commenters who are watching right now on your computers at home, at work or at the library. We'd absolutely like to thank the leagues' staffs and the many people who have worked to make this day possible, both here and at other blogs.

OK, here we go. With the 293rd pick, Soundin' Off is proud to select, from...

(What? Really? Can you get... Y-yeah, do that. OK.)

Umm... We've traded our pick to Spillane for a couple of CDs and a Celtic Woman to be named. Thank you. The Philadelphia Flyers are on the clock.

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Gretzky still gets 'em going, huh?

With the 10th pick, the Bruins select Claude Julien... (Let's hope all the new sweaters come out looking as close to normal as this one...)

Lots of former Nighthawks: Dave Gagner (dad of Sam), Bob Janecyk and Paul Fenton (scouts)... And it's always nice to see Gordie Clark, even if it's over the TV.

Loved the New Canaan flavor, both real and accidental: Max Pacioretty going No. 22 to Montreal, and Thomas Hickey going to L.A. at 4. (Thomas is NC coach Bo Hickey's given name.)

Word is nothing has changed, and that if it comes to Monday at 5, the Isles will tender qualifying offers to Steve Regier and Drew Fata and will not tender Billy Thompson.

Eurohockey had Justin Papineau to Switzerland and Paul Flache to Germany, but I'm too lazy to look for links. It also had Martin St. Pierre to Russia.

Spent the afternoon blogging the Travelers. The full archive is here. Dunno if anyone will be joining in over the weekend -- they have enough to do, and I'll be elsewhere -- but there it is...

Don King pop quiz: Vocabulary

My folks were up at Foxwoods a few months ago and happened to walk in on a Don King Productions press conference. Dad said it was "take your daughter to work day," and one of the fellows there had his two daughters with him. He gave them notebooks and told them to write down all the big words they didn't understand. Well, in that spirit after spending time in front of the Arena today...

Define and use in a sentence.

--Hoopla
--Regalia
--Haughty
--Inimitable
--Fait accompli
--Conviviality
--Lumpenproletariat

(By the way, I hope my list of references -- incomplete though it was -- makes it into the paper. It was like watching The Simpsons.)

Two leagues

On a day the NHL talked about dots and made Jeremy Jacobs its chairman of the board...

...the Untied-No-More International Hockey League (and its six teams, no mention of the Turner Cup) announced its name change and these rules changes:

--No instigator, except in the last five minutes;
--17-and-two for all games;
--Misconducts instead of game misconducts for secondary altercations;
--No hook-and-dive calls allowed, and if a ref considers both, call the dive;
--Tighter standards in the neutral zone, looser standards in the defensive zone;
--Four-on-four OT followed by a three-man shootout.

Hockey, sort of

Kiddie camp is coming. Who's ready? Who's in withdrawal? Who's pitching draft recaps (that may turn, surprisingly, into draft previews)?

Eurohockey.net says Kevin Mitchell is going to Slovenia*, and Vinny Macri is off to Germany. And the Utah Grizzlies talk about the arrival of Luch Aquino as the beginning of the affiliation. Why not?

Rather than throw short stories onto the Web, the sports staff will be bloggin' from the TPC beginning Wednesday. I'm not up there again until Friday, but I'm hoping someone comes through and asks Dennis Haysbert a Pedro Cerrano question after the pro-am.

Speaking of, arrived in Cromwell this morning to find Chris Elsberry watching the space shuttle undock with the International Space Station. Sean Patrick Bowley arrived moments later, booted up his compy and showed us Celestia, which looks pretty darn sick.

*-Ljubljana, coincidentally a day after I got to wondering about the history of the letter J in European languages. (I wonder about weird things.)

Comeback Kid

Fighting computer and wireless issues, but know that Sean Bergenheim is coming back to the Islanders. The press release is on its way out, apparently; one-year deal.

Our man in Denver

Ben Guite has signed a two-year extension with Colorado.

"Ben provided some quality minutes during our stretch run," said Avalanche GM Francois Giguere. "We look for him to continue his role on our team."

Somewhere, a fan club smiles.

They're always putting Ireland down

Detroit dumped Greg Ireland as Grand Rapids' head coach.

Box o'changes, after the White Space of Blogging Ignorance:







 

TEAM	Old	New
HOU	Rob Daum (4/18)	Kevin Constantine (5/29)
BPT	Dan Marshall (4/30)	Jack Capuano (4/30)
BIN	Dave Cameron (to St. Mike's 5/1)
PHI	Kjell Samuelsson (6/6)	Craig Berube (6/6)
GR	Greg Ireland (6/15)
SPR	Steve Stirling-s	Geoff Ward (5/15)
NOR	Mike Haviland-n	Steve Stirling-s
RCK	---	Mike Haviland-n
CLE	---	Joe Sacco (5/7)

n-from Norfolk to Rockford with Chicago's affiliation; s-from Springfield to Norfolk with Tampa Bay's affiliation

Would love to tell you something about Greg Ireland as a coach, but, you know, Grand Rapids is part of the Rumored Conference.

VBG to DEL

Eurohockey notes the departure of Dustin VanBallegooie to Duisburg, Germany. Obligatory fun with Babelfish: Though "Bridgeport Sound Tigers" appears intact in the original, the sentence becomes "Last with the Bridgeport sound of tiger active Canadians receives a contract for the coming season" in translation. And they like their exclamation points on that site!

Jan Hlavac, entwined in both NY teams' histories, is back on these shores with Tampa.

Met Bridgeport councilman Johnny Dye last year when desperately looking for a Nutmeg State Games story. He and Bruce Hargett got me one and were surely enthusiastic about the tennis going on in the shadow of Wonderland. Dye died Tuesday night at 58. RIP.

Lowell's city council approved the deals to keep the Devils and UML at Tsongas Arena.

The QC Flames logo, ladies and gentlemen.

James Mirtle posts the voting for the NHL awards.

(adding) Here's an important survey map. (Tip: Infonaut)

Ex-files

Wilkes-Barre/Scranton signed Kyle Rank to an AHL deal.

Also, in two languages, Freddy Cloutier is off to Renon, Italia, where Blaine Down played a couple of years ago.

Heeeeeeeeeere, Fishy Fishy Fishy Fishy!

Spent the night with the Bluefish, but at least got to watch most of the Belmont between pitches. You think, when Hard Spun and Curlin got back across the street to the stables, the other horses were like, "Ha ha! You got beat by a girl"? (The juveniles probably were, anyway.)

Patrick Moran passed on this piece of the D&C, about how Rochester re-upped its dual affiliation. The D&C followed up a day later with this about how the Amerks' and Knighthawks' minority partner is suing Steve Donner. These are always a blast... as long as you're not the one covering them. Parts of this one sound too familiar. A link to the actual complaint is on the paper's Web site, if you've got the free time to plow through.

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With my own free time the past week or so, I'd set up a little Micro League Baseball tournament, using the ol' Apple emulator. (The program is a slightly different version than the one I'd had on my old Apple IIc, but it works.) Did it as a 16-team double-elimination tournament; used the top pitcher every game, and let the computer run the games until the bracket finals. With this version, it meant that it would panic and yank pitchers quickly if they ran into trouble, and it would leave them in forever if things were going OK.

For one pitcher, that made it a legendary tournament; I was rather surprised that his team won, but he was incredible. He pitched four consecutive four-hitters; the second one lasted 17 innings. I was stunned the computer had left him in, until I realized that, given the scoreboard when I checked in the eighth, he allowed just one hit over the final 10 or more innings. In that fourth game, the winners bracket final, he hit the game-winning home run in the bottom of the seventh. Then in the championship, he had an RBI fielder's choice, and a two-run home run, which gives him one more fictional homer in two fictional games than he had in a 10-year real career, in which this one year was by far his best, still memorable for one stat in particular.

They beat another team that surprised the heck out of me. That team had one of my favorite all-time players, though he's a favorite of mine for what he did with his first team, not this team, which came out of the losers bracket and avenged its only loss along the way; he closed out their last three wins (and the loss, actually).

Here are the opening matchups, randomly generated. Wanna guess which teams made the final and which players I meant?

1961 Yankees -1980 Royals
1984 Tigers -1978 Yankees
1955 Dodgers-1980 Phillies
1975 Red Sox-1975 Reds
1968 Tigers-1955 Senators
1927 Yankees-1973 A's
1963 Dodgers-1945 Cubs
1969 Mets-1979 Orioles

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Cardillo's prediction. Cardillo's gamer. That's called "clutch."

Heeeeey Bulldog

Eric Manlow and the Hamilton Bulldogs are Calder Cup champions. Manlow joins Ray Schultz as former Sound Tigers who got their names on the little Cup after they left here. And good on Ajay Baines, a good ol' heart and soul kind of guy, for scoring the Cup-winning goal.

Here's a nice read on MVP Carey Price from Hamilton Spectator columnist Steve Milton.

Cappy heads to Bangor, and Bangor's glad to see him.

Ol' buddy Phil Soto-Ortiz was doing today's Masuk softball game on the Internet and wanted me to come on with him. Tried to avoid it, but he insisted, so I gave it a whirl. Masuk had a crazy inning, and it included a bases-loaded, ground-ball error. I remarked that it would have been tough for her to get it to the plate or to turn two, anyway.

Um... Michael... there were two out.

Fortunately, thanks to this blog, it wasn't the first time I've made a fool of myself on the Internet.

Well... happy summer.

You think you know (CT), but you haven't got a clue

A 6-2 Hamilton win leaves the Bulldogs 60 minutes away from their first Calder Cup. Eric Manlow scored a goal and an assist and was second star. Game 5 is Thursday.

Congrats to Darien's Ryan Shannon, who'll get his name on the Cup with the flighty Ducks. And clutch job for Darien by NBC, which cut back to the Cup just in time to catch his moment with it aloft. (I normally complain about networks cutting away from the Cup for stand-up interviews, but that one with Selanne was by far the best one yet. Usually, you're cutting away from actual emotion to talk about emotion with guys who are still numb; this interview was serious emotion all over his face.)

Tip o'cap to correspondent Bob Farrington, who passed on the Okposo staying in school release at the Gophers' site.

ATL: Craig Berube is again coach of the Phantoms. Eurohockey notes that Bryce Lampman signed with TPS Turku (link in Finnish). It also notes that ol' buddy Dusan Salficky is off to Nizhny Novgorod, that brief Sound Tiger Steve Crampton is off to Germany (German), that Isles draft pick Robin Figren was picked up by the Edmonton Oil Kings in the WHL expansion draft (Canadian English), and -- zut alors! -- that former Nighthawk John Miner is moving from Denmark to France. (Fun with Babelfish: "It (Miner) flew away to Europe which it has furrowed for 16 years with success.")

Combining the last two parts of that, Brent Raedeke's name caught my eye on the Edmonton list. Couldn't find out if he's related to former Nighthawk Mark, but they're both from Regina. But in looking: Red Deer drafted Craig Redmond's kid. (Craig Redmond only played five games in New Haven? Yeesh, did I see them all?)

Didn't actually make it to Willimantic; turns out Eastern Connecticut's athletic facilities are technically in Mansfield (glad I asked). When I went to Lime Rock, I found it hard to believe you could drive for an hour and a half and still be in Connecticut. Know better now: You can drive for an hour and a half and still be in the middle of the state. I always like driving through towns -- or at least seeing signs for towns -- I've never seen. Bolton, Columbia, Marlborough, Hebron: they were dots on a map, or parts of regional high schools and co-op hockey teams. I see Route 66 cutting through some of these small towns and imagine a trail cut through a forest, no matter how much I know it's not true, and that the center of East Hampton looks just a little like Route 34 at the Derby/Orange border.

I don't know why that particularly excites me, but hey.

Had never seen this before, but ECSU had one in the baseball press box: looks like a ladder, but with alternating steps...

Have a fair chance in the next two nights of covering the softball champions of each of our four big conferences. Now if only those winners were all in the same CIAC class, we could play 'em off for the Connecticut Post Cup or something...

Randomly: Fun (well, not for the victims) with unintended consequences from the Freakonomics folks. China suppresses Tiananmen Square so well that references fly over people's heads.

ROTATE!

Newsday reports that Alexei Yashin is being bought out, after all. Mark Herrmann column supplements.

Mississauga to St. Catharines. St. Mike's to Mississauga. Probably St. Mike's kids to St. Mike's.

Is it truly a good idea for a low-minors team, even in jest, to use the word "move" and "to (another state)" together in a press-release headline? (Especially since "New Jersey Jackals" sounds pretty good.)

SCF Game 3 gets a 2 share. Wait, they left you and me out: So 2.000002.

ESPN's Scott Burnside says (among other things) that the AHL may test one-minute penalties in OT, which is probably fair, unless you take the sudden-death part out of sudden-death OT. (Or, you know, go back to playing actual five-on-five hockey in overtime, but I know, stifle your radical concepts.) He also says the AHL probably wouldn't be the guinea pigs for bigger nets, and good for the AHL. Maybe most interesting: all faceoffs would be at a dot next year. Hmm. Got to see that in action.

AICN's Hercules asks: If Jericho lives, why not Veronica Mars? (Maybe he, Amanda and I were the only ones watching...)

Off to Willimantic tomorrow... again. I tried today but got as far as Rocky Hill before frantic calls from both bosses let me know the game was called. The lightning strikes all around -- as well as the cars off the road -- were a good tip-off. (Two days of Tim Hortons? Caffeine overdose...)

Big man (yes?)

Hamilton grabs a 2-1 lead. Two goals for Danny Groulx, who has six in the playoffs after scoring none in the regular season.

And did anyone else think that, rather than diving in the opening minute, Chris Neil took that stick in a delicate location? Could be wrong...

Different kind of power play II

The Hersheyparkers solved Carey Price in Game 2 and won 4-2 to square the final. Hamilton took two leads, but Jakub Klepis scored 42 seconds after the second Hamilton goal to tie it up. Scott Barney (his second) and Chris Bourque put the Bears ahead for good. And check out who assisted on Klepis' goal: Joey Tenute, back from the dead that punctured lung.

As linked above in Tim Leone's gamer: "(Louis) Robitaille and Hamilton's Maxim Lapierre jawed in French and English on their team benches about two hours before the game."

Was just about to settle down for this off-day blog entry when the lights went out. Hurray! Let's all flash back to the days before electricity! Telling stories 'round the fire! Big pot o' boilin' water! Rubella! Our friendly neighborhood electric company said it'd be back by 2 a.m. But hey, you guys*? Not until 2:51.

*-They're gonna turn it on. They're gonna bring you the power.**
**-Oh, I had to.***
***-OK, yeah, this too.****
****-One more, non-Lehrer.

YAY! MARTY! MARTY! MARTY!*

This Carey Price kid made a routine 46 saves to lead Hamilton to a 4-0 win in Game 1. Lotsa fights at the end, which could lead to some discipline. Did you see Tim Leone the other day, where Bruce Boudreau compared Price to a punk kid name of Patrick Roy? Game 2 is Saturday.

Meanwhile, the Blues today announced the signing of five players, including one Martin Kariya, returning to these shores for the first time since he dumped the puck right at Sebastien Caron in overtime, Game 3, 2004.

*-It's from "The Critic," and it went through my head every time Kariya did something good.

Different kind of power play

Just turned on the Hershey Webcast to hear John Walton talking about the lights apparently going out at Giant Center (maybe a lightning strike? I missed it) before Game 1. Hmm... feels familiar, somehow.

By the way, it was a year ago today that the Baseggio-Bingham-Lambert coaching staff was let go. Feels like a lifetime ago sometimes...