Seasons Greetings all! It’s a light week – all but three of the NCAA prospects and most of the European prospects are off till after the holidays except for Anton Forsberg and SSK who will be back next week. So without further adieu let’s get going.
As always, starting off in Springfield it was a bit of a rough weekend with the team going 1-1-1 and losing two of their best defensemen in Saturday’s game. Starting on Friday with a rough one, the Falcons traveled to Providence to face off against the Bruins in a stoplight game – the Falcons wore their red alternates and the Bruins wore their yellows. The Falcons would spot Providence a 3-0 lead before Tomas Kubalik would score his sixth of the season when Tim Erixon‘s blast bounced off the end wall and Kubalik backhanded it in. 18 seconds later Nick Drazenovic would make it 3-2 with his sixth of the season. Midway through the third period Cam Atkinson would score his team leading 14th goal of the season. Curtis McElhinney would make 23 saves in the 6-3 loss allowing an empty net goal.
Saturday, the St John’s IceCaps would come to town with Allen York making his AHL season debut with 21 saves in a 3-2 overtime loss. Sean Collins continued his strong rookie season scoring his sixth of the season by knocking in the rebound of a Michael Chaput shot. The IceCaps would score a goal in the first and the third to make it 2-1 but with 28 seconds left St. John’s would learn again “you don’t mess with the Johan”. Ryan Johansen picked up his fifth point in three games against St John’s. Ryan found a loose puck in the Caps crease and tapped it in for ninth of the season. Sadly, the Falcons would lose the game only 56 seconds into overtime when Ivan Telegin would score his third of the season. In the overtime loss the Falcons would lose John Moore and Dalton Prout to injury: Moore to a upper body injury and Prout to hand injury from a uncalled slash (not his fight in the first period after Moore was hit from behind). With those two out, the Falcons would sign former Ohio Junior Blue Jacket/Ohio State Buckeye Chris Reed who’d play Sunday before being released from his PTO on Monday.
Sunday, the Falcons would travel to Manchester to play the Monarchs. After a scoreless first period, Cam Atkinson would open the scoring with a blast from the faceoff dot for his 15th of the season. Late in the third period, Jonathan Audy-Marchessault would do his Cam Atkinson impression when he scored his eighth of the season in pretty much the same fashion as Atkinson’s to tie the game. The game would go to a shootout with Cam Atkinson using his standard move to score on Martin Jones. Nick Drazenovic would score in the next round – after a few dekes he’d slide it through Jone’s five hole. Curtis McElhinney would make 32 saves in the win stopping all four shots he faced in the shootout in the 3-2 win.
Another week of no CBJ prospects playing in the ECHL with only players signed by the Falcons playing including fresh from the AHL Paul Dainton. The IceMen would go 0-2-0-1 last week with Dainton playing in all three but only playing 19 seconds on Sunday.
Slight change of format here – with so many prospects being off, I’m going to skip most of them and the usual summary of prospects who didn’t score. We’ll move on to the fun part of this time of the year – except Christmas of course (or your holiday of choice) – the World Junior Championships which get going with pre-tournament games starting this week.
Due to a lack of info, I have nothing on Lukas Sedlák and the Czech Republic and Joonas Korpisalo and Finland even though it still appears as Joonas is Finland’s number one goalie entering the tournament. Mike Reilly and Team USA didn’t start camp until Sunday and the people I follow didn’t mention him but here’s Chris Peters take on the US’s talented blueline. Mike does get a free trip to Finland as that’s where final cuts will be made. We expect that the team will be announced the 22nd or 23rd of December.
On to Boone Jenner and Team Canada. To the surprise of no one Boone was a lock for Canada playing only in the team’s intrasquad match and then being scratched in the team’s two games against UAB (that’s the University of Alberta). Now as you know, I was the main voice of the “Jenner for captain” rally but Team Canada named Ryan Nugent-Hopkins captain and Jonathan Huberdeau (who’s suspended for abuse of an official in the Q) and Scott Harrington (I have no problem with this one) assistant captains. I still expect great things from Boone as we all know he doesn’t need a letter on his jersey to be a leader. According to TSN’s Marc Masters, Boone has been practicing with Blues prospect Ty Rattie and Canadiens prospect Charles Hudon as a third line and is also practicing with the top PK unit. In off ice antics, the boys went to a toy store to help underprivileged kids and well Boone…you know ill let the video speak for itself (nice helmet Booner).
Moving on to defending champ Sweden, I have some bad news to report on Oscar Dansk according to Stefan G:son, Dansk is currently third on the Tre Kronor’s (three crowns) depth chart meaning he might not even play at all. It could be the Jackets fan in me talking, but after looking at the other two goalies stats I don’t know what Sweden’s coach is thinking.
In positive news both the NHL Network(because its so swamped with content) and SiriusXM will be picking up the games; but in slight bad news the tournament is in Russia meaning to catch the games live you’ll need a pot of coffee to catch them but the games will be re-ran at night.
Josh Anderson-London Knights(OHL)
Season Stats 36GP 10-14-24 +7 33PIM
Those London Knights just keep rolling along going 3-0 to push their winning streak to 21 straight games. Josh would be held scoreless in a win over Owen Sound and a shootout win over Guelph but the team still managed to pick up a point in Sunday’s win. London welcomed the Kingston Fronternacs and after earning a 2-0 lead, the Fronts would score three straight before Josh struck. With his linemates doing most of the work, Josh got the puck from Chris Tierney and fired a backhand just over the Kingston goalie’s shoulder for his 10th of the season.
Gianluca Curcuruto-Plymouth Whalers(OHL)
Season Stats 32GP 1-13-14 +2 16PIM
Gianluca returned to the Whalers lineup after missing a game with the flu but the Whalers would go 0-2-0-1. After being held off the scoresheet in Tuesday’s overtime loss to Sault Ste Marie, the weekend arrived to see what would come. Friday night in a 7-3 loss to Sudbury that included a three point night by Tomas Kubalik’s little brother Dominik, Gianluca would pick up his first multi-point game since late September. With the Whalers trailing 2-1, Plymouth went on the power play. It’s hard to tell from the video, but I’m guessing Gianluca’s pass led to Ryan Hartman’s breakaway who passed it over to CBJ rookie camp invite Alex Aleardi for his 13th. For his second assist, if you’re a regular reader to this blog (I know there’s gotta be one of you out there) Gianluca’s second assist looked a lot like most of his assists coming off a blast from the point. All Garrett Meurs had to do was tap it in. Gianluca would be held scoreless in Plymouth’s 2-0 loss to Barrie.
Drew Olson-Minnesota-Duluth(WCHA)
Season Stats 18GP 1-4-5 18PIM
Drew and the Bulldogs traveled to Anchorage to face the Seawolves in Friday’s 5-1 win. Drew picked up his fourth assist of the season when he dropped a pass to Tony Cameranesi for his eighth goal of the season off a wristshot from the faceoff circle. Drew would be held off the scoresheet in Saturday’s 2-1 win.
TJ Tynan-Notre Dame(CCHA)
Season Stats 18GP 5-10-15 12PIM
A light week for TJ and the Irish as they played only one game against Bowling Green with the Irish winning 4-1. TJ picked up a goal and a assist. With the Irish trailing 1-0, TJ scored his fifth of the season and he added another assist later in the game off a great pass (at least that’s how ND’s site describes it…no video) on Mike Voran’s fourth of the season. TJ and his linemates Mike Voran and Mario Lucia would combine for six points in the win. After a slow start, TJ ended the first half on a six game point streak scoring 10 points (3-7-10) after scoring only five in his first 10 games.
Next week will be another quick one as only the AHL and ECHL will be playing. There will also be a few pre-tournament games to discuss with final rosters for the WJC being announced.
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