Phantoms @ Bridgeport Sound Tigers, 10-18-09, Third Period

Nodl is on the bench, but he has not come out with either the third or the fourth lines. Not sure if that means he's in the Coach's Casa del Cane, or if he's gotten dented. We shall see. And right on cue, there goes Ross out with Clackson and Klotz.

Clackson is going off for slashing, however, so the next thing we'll see is the Phantoms' PK unit.

NICE stop by Boucher. The Phantoms have done well at closing down Bridgeport and limiting their opportunities, but the Sound Tigers just got a nice shot through and Boucher was equal to the task.

We're back to even strength, and we are starting to get some end-to-end play. We're not a team that's built for a river-hockey style, so I hope we can go back to just shutting down the opponent.

Whoops, there goes a delay-of-game penalty against Bartulis. I never did like that infraction. (See: my previous Phantoms blog, where I griped about its existence repeatedy.)

Phooey, and I have even less reason to like that penalty, as the Sound Tigers just scored to make it 3-2. Now all of a sudden Bridgeport and their fans are awake again, insead of just going through the motions. We have 6:25 left in the period, so it's time to buckle down and not let the Sound Tigers back in.

Eee, we get a scramble in front of our net with under two minutes left. The fans get loud, but the puck stays out. We end up icing the puck with 1:04 left, so the Sound Tigers pull their goalie for the faceoff in the Phantoms' end. They also take their timeout.

Ross is out to take the draw. Boooosh! We clear the puck, sending it out slowly enough to avoid another icing. Bridgeport has five forwards and one D out there. Another clear IS called icing, but it was close to not being icing and Gilbert is not pleased.

Yet another faceoff in our end, and this time we carry the puck out and SCOOOORE! Kolanos! 4-2 Phantoms with 19 seconds left!

And the Phantoms win! 4-2 is the final score! I can hear Ross being announced as a star of the game, and I can also hear Phantoms fans who are in attendance cheering. :) The stars are:

#3: MacDonald (BRI)
#2: Boucher
#1 Ross.

We got 5 out of a possible 6 points this weekend, and we have raised our record to 3-2-1-0. Well done, Phantoms!