Bryzgalov sidelined from Channel One Cup due to illness
Originally named to Russia's roster for the Channel One Cup tournament taking place later this week in Moscow,
Ilya Bryzgalov has been removed from the team by the Russian Hockey Federation. The federation's official web site posted an
announcement yesterday that Bryzgalov and two other players -- Alexander Popov and Evgeny Dadonov -- had failed medical exams and would be replaced on the roster.
There has since been further clarification that Bryzgalov is not injured. Reportedly, he has been bedridden for a couple days with a bad case of the flu. National team goaltending coach Vladimir Myshkin
told Sovsport today that Bryzgalov has been dealing with a high fever and would not be at full strength yet to prepare for Russia's game against Sweden on Thursday.
At any rate, this does not appear to be any sort of a long-term situation of concern. Bryzgalov has played very well in his last two KHL starts and appeared to finally be on top of his game prior to the league's schedule break for the Channel One international tourney.
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Phantoms settle for one point in Providence
The Adirondack Phantoms finished a grueling slate of three games in three cities in less than 72 hours with a 3-2 overtime loss to the Providence Bruins late Sunday afternoon. The Phantoms were 1-1-1 over the two road games and home match in the middle.
Tye McGinn and defenseman
Jeff Dimmen tallied goals in a losing effort for the Flyers' AHL farm team, who were outshot by a 47-26 margin. Goaltender
Scott Munroe pretty much stole a point for the Phantoms with a tremendous performance in net.
Munroe's Providence counterpart, Niklas Svedberg, was equally strong in net. The Bruins were also playing for the third time in three days, but two of their games were at home.
The Phantoms did not have their skating legs for much of the game, getting outshot 38-13 over the first two two periods and taking a series of careless penalties. Finally, Adirondack came on in the third period.
Over the course of the game, the Swedish rookie made outstanding saves on
Zac Rinaldo (a wraparound attempt and a later poke-in attempt with a defensemen down in the crease) and
Harry Zolnierczyk (breakaway) in particular to make sure his own team got at least a point from the game.
Jamie Tarif opened the scoring in the game midway through the first period, wristing a shot over Munroe's glove off a 2-on-1 rush. The Phantoms returned the favor on a line rush goal of their own at 1:34 of the second period, as McGinn nicely converted a feed from
Erik Gustafsson to tie the game.
Brayden Schenn was later credited with a secondary assist on the play.
At 14:58 of the second period, Tardif scored his second of the game to restore the lead for the Bruins. This one was a power play goal. On the play, Munroe made the initial save on a shot by Ryan Spooner but Tardif bunted the rebound out of the air and over the goal line.
The score remained 2-1 in the Bruins' favor until 14:38 of the third period. After failing miserably to generate scoring chances on a previous power play chance a couple minutes earlier, the Phantoms cashed in. Dimmen pinched up on the play and found himself alone to claim a loose puck and snap it past Svedberg to make it a 2-2 game. McGinn and
Jason Akeson (10th assist since his ECHL recall) drew the helpers.
There were a few anxious moments late in regulation as the Phantoms had to survive a minor penalty with their best penalty killer,
Sean Couturier, in the box for slashing. Munroe made a trendendous save on Chris Bourque to keep the game tied.
Overtime did not last long. At the 1:10 mark, a Providence scoring chance developed quickly out of the Phantoms defensive corner and Kyle MacKinnon pumped a quick shot home to seal the 3-2 win for the Bruins.
The Phantoms (10-12-1) will take a much-needed day off from practice today. The team has home games in Glens Falls against Syracuse on Friday and Manchester on Saturday.
Some other game and team notes:
*
Marc-Andre Bourdon has not played or practiced with the team in over a week. The official reason is an illness. Phantoms coach
Terry Murray told Phantoms beat writers last week that he hopes Bourdon will be ready to return to practice this week.
*
Oliver Lauridsen was sidelined for all three weekend games with an upper-body injury, but was at least practicing again.
* Team captain
Ben Holmstrom sustained a lower-body injury on a routine dump-in play in Friday's game in Syracuse. He is expected to miss numerous games, according to a
report in the Post Star.
* Despite the Phantoms' struggles in scoring goals,
Matt Ford remains deep in Murray's doghouse. He only dressed for one of three games this weekend, and played on the fourth line in the one game he appeared.
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Titans tumble again in Southern swing
The Trenton Titans' three-games-in-three-days trip through the South did not go as planned for coach Vince Williams' team. After losing overtime and shootout games to the South Carolina Stingrays on Friday and Saturday, the Flyers' ECHL affiliate dropped a 4-2 decision to the Gwinnett Gladiators in front of a crowd of 6,503 fans in Duluth, GA.
In all three games this weekend, fast starts were not a problem for Trenton. Seeing it through for 60 minutes was the issue. Andrew Conboy got the Titans off to a 1-0 lead less than three minutes into the first period. But the Gladiators scored the next two goals to take the lead by the end of the opening period.
Ian Slater responded for the Titans early in the second period to knot the score at 2-2, but that was all the team would get in a game in which it generated 29 shots to 28 by Gwinnett. Tyler Murovich's second goal of the contest restored the lead for Gwinnett early in the third period, and the team later tacked on a late empty netter to seal the win. Starting Trenton goaltender Scott Wedgewood stopped 24 of 27 shots.
Marcel Noebels saw his four-game point streak come to an end in this game, but generated four shots on goal. Fellow rookie
Matt Mangene was also held without a point, while
Andrew Johnston remained sidelined by an upper-body injury.
The Titans fell to 8-11-3 on the season. Since Nov. 1, the team has only won three times in 15 tries. With all of the line juggling and roster changes that have taken place -- including the release of team captain Ray DiLauro, whose job seemed as secure as any of the veterans when the season began -- one has to wonder if the next significant move if things don't turn around soon will be a coaching change.
Trenton returns to action over the weekend with Friday, Saturday and Sunday home games against Wheeling, Elmira and Orlando.
Friday night's game is Anti-Bullying Night in conjunction with the Anti-Defamation League and will also feature a special appearance by Flyers' Hall of Fame goaltender
Bernie Parent. Parent will do for-a-fee autograph signings with a portion of the proceeds going to benefit the homeless in Philadelphia. For more information,
click here.
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Hovinen's struggles continue
Rookie Titans goaltender
Niko Hovinen started Saturday's 6-5 shootout loss in South Carolina. He returned to the backup role yesterday, as New Jersey Devils prospect Wedgewood got the start in net.
For the ECHL season to date, the 24-year-old Hovinen has appeared in 10 games, with a 2-4-2 record, 3.43 goals against average and .881 save percentage. The 20-year-old Wedgewood, who is also a rookie, has appeared in 15 games, with a 6-7-1 record, 2.94 goals against average and .898 save percentage.
It is not uncommon for rookie goaltenders, especially ones coming over from the big-rink European game to the smaller North American rinks and more shooting-oriented style , to struggle for their first half season. There are also four other factors to consider when assessing Hovinen's slow start:
1) He has had injury issues. He had hip surgery over the summer which, despite his insistence at training camp that he felt 100 percent, usually takes some time to work through. When the regular season got underway, he had an upper body injury (bruised clavicle and mild concussion) that cost him a few games. He also missed one scheduled start due to the flu.
2) He has not had many chances to start back-to-back games. Any goaltender needs to get into a rhythm, but Hovinen's history in Finland suggested that the 6-foot-7 netminder in particular needed lots of playing of playing time to get into -- and stay in -- a rhythm.
3) The Titans are largely a young team on the blueline (even before the release of veteran DiLauro), and have not been very good defensively as a team. Both Wedgewood and Hovinen have suffered through more than one game where they've had very little help in front. Mediocre goaltending and defense are as symbiotic as strong D and goalie play.
4) Whenever any rookie goalie's season is analyzed, it's more important to see how much he progresses from the start of the year to the end, rather than looking at a still-small sampling of games. Patience is hard to exercise sometimes when a player struggles but it's a must for young goaltenders and defensemen in particular. If you want to develop these players, sometimes you have live through significant growing pains. There is also a risk that the patience won't ultimately pay off.
With all of that said, Hovinen's struggles thus far in the 2012-13 season have been pretty significant ones. I am not a goaltending expert by any means, but some of it seems mechanical. He needs to do a better job on his angles and limiting rebounds. He's been committing too early, and he frequently looks awkward and off-balance even when he does make saves. The huge Finn has been especially vulnerable to high shots.
The most worrisome development of the early season -- apart from Hovinen being hugely outplayed by fellow 24-year-old rookie
Cal Heeter at the Phantoms' training camp and the Finn ending up in the ECHL -- happened two starts ago.
Williams pulled Hovinen from a game after allowing three first-period goals because the coach did not feel the goaltender competed hard enough to make second-opportunity saves around the net. That is simply unacceptable if Williams' assessment was accurate (I didn't see the match in question, as I was watching an overlapping Phantoms game).
The small-rink adjustment and older-European-rookie arguments are not automatic excuses either. Twenty-three year-old Providence Bruins goaltender Niklas Svedberg has adjusted smoothly. As with Hovinen, Svedberg is a bit of a late-blooming prospect. Last season, he led Brynäs to a Swedish championship in similar fashion to Hovinen (before an playoff-ending injury) backstopping Pelicans Lahti to the SM-liiga finals. Svedberg has hit the ground running in North America, while Hovinen has stumbled.
Likewise, 28-year-old Swedish goaltender Cristopher Nihlstorp has come on of late for the AHL's Texas Stars after a few early rough patches. Nihlstorp, who is on a one-year contract this season after spending his entire career in Sweden, has outplayed highly touted American rookie Jack Campbell by a wide margin to become the T-Stars' primary starter.
As such, Hovinen does not get a free pass simply because it's his first year in North America. Other goalies are dealing with the same adjustments with young teammates in front of them, and are handing the transition much better to date. However, every player develops at his own pace.
The Flyers organization will exercise some patience with Hovinen through his struggles, and I suggest fans try to do the same (tempting as it may be to already declare his signing a failure). But it is also up to the player to embrace the challenge of picking up the pace and at least giving Wedgewood a more sustained push for the Titans' primary starting job. Thus far, there has been little doubt that Wedgewood has been the better of the two first-year goalies in Trenton.
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Coming tomorrow: Flyers junior and collegiate prospect updates, barring significant CBA-related news.
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