It was a tough night tonight for the Sound Tigers as they lose to the Manchester Monarchs in what could be one of the most controversial losses this season for the Tigers. There was a pretty decent crowd there tonight for the game, Sundays are never a great days to draw big crowd but looked like there were more people there today then this time last year. It didn't take long tonight for the fans to get a good look at newly added fighter Jeremy Yablonski as he went toe to toe with Justin Johnson. One of the most intense fights I've seen, both players continually throwing hard hits. The fight lasted about two minutes with Yablonski definitely taking the win. After the two were done you could see Johnson looked like he was saying "good fight". It seemed the Tigers got a jump out of it and it showed as Robin Figren absolutely buried a one timer past Manchester's goalie Erik Ersburg to put the Tigers up 1-0. It was a good look and a great pass by Dylan Reese to find Figren in the high slot. That would be it for scoring in the first period, Shots were 9 for Bridgeport and 7 for Manchester.
As the second period started the Sound Tigers were applying good pressure in the Manchester zone but six minutes into the second Manchester's Dwight King was behind the net threw the puck in front where it banked off of a Sound Tiger defenseman and through the legs of Sound Tigers goalie Mikko Koskinen and into the net to make it 1-1. Rhett Rakhshani had a break away on Ersburg but was hooked by Manchester's Alec Martinez and did not get a shot off, it did however draw a power play. Bridgeport's power play has lacked the last couple of years and it carried over into tonight. The Sound Tigers went 0 for 3 on the power play getting limited to no chances on the man advantage, while the penalty kill looks to be solid again this year. They looked good tonight, going 4 for 4 on the penalty kill. Shots for the second period were 15 for Manchester and 10 for Bridgeport.
At the start of the third period Manchester pored on the pressure getting chance after chance until Manchester's Justin Azevedo took a back hander on the goal line and beat Koskinen to make it 2-1. Koskinen bounced right back though as he made one of the best saves of the game sliding cross crease to rob a Manchester player point blank. The Sound Tigers never gave up as they pressured the Manchester and got a couple great scoring opportunity's but Ersburg shut the door every time. Most of the time as the tigers were entering the offensive zone, Manchester always had at least four guys back to shut down anything the Sound Tigers could develop. With 7.1 seconds left and the score 2-1, the Sound Tigers had a offensive face off to the left of Ersburg which will lead to what could be one of the most controversial blown calls this season. The Tigers with goalie Koskinen pulled, won the face off and carried the puck around the boards, where Dylan Reese sent the puck up in the air and it was gloved down out of the air and put on the ice by Rhett Rakhshani. From my angle and from a couple other people I have talked to, the puck hit a skate of a Manchester player, went back to Rakhshani's stick, and then it trickled over to Matt Martin who put in past Ersburg and into the net with 0.6 seconds left to go in the game. The rink went crazy and so did the Sound Tigers everyone was celebrating, then the unthinkable happens. The trailing referee who was on the opposite side of the play and was in between the blue line and red line waved off the goal. It was clearly a good goal and this was a terrible call, I have never heard boo's that loud coming from the stands at The Arena At Harbor Yard. They were well deserved though. But with the referee's call the Sound Tigers fate was sealed. Shots were 10 for Manchester and 9 for Bridgeport.
This brings up what I have been saying about video review and why it should be mandatory and applied to the AHL. With video review the play in tonights game would have easily been over turned and counted as a good goal. On http://www.soundtigerforums.com/ i brought up this idea and was answered by "OneTigerFan" who gives a very good explanation to why the AHL doesn't have video review. He says "The reason that the AHL doesn't have video replay is because it would be too expensive. While all games are on AHL Live, the various arenas have different standards of video and the large majority of them (including Bridgeport) do not have nearly the amount of video coverage needed to use video replay. Each arena would need to have mounted video cameras above the goals on each side to replay goal calls. This would all cost way more then most teams could afford (especially considering some of the horrible attendance numbers some teams put up).".
After the game Michael Fornabaio who writes for the Sound Tigers wrote that Matt Martin said after the game"It's in the past now". From what Fornabaio wrote also on his twitter account he said "Replay is pretty inconclusive. Reese flipped it up from behind net. Rakhshani gloved down. Martin thought it hit MCR player bf he slapped in"
3 Stars:
#1. Justin Azevedo-MAN-Scored the game winning goal for Manchester.
#2. Robin Figren-BST-Only Sound Tiger goal, played well.
#3. Erik Ersburg-MAN-Stopped 27 out of 28 shots Sound Tigers took.
Honorable Mention: Justin Dibenedetto-BST-Couple big hits and looked very good in both games this weekend, good scoring chances.
Shots:
Bridgeport-28
Manchester-32
Starting Line-ups:
Bridgeport / Manchester
#1-Mikko Koskinen-G / #31-Erik Ersburg-G
#3-Travis Hamonic-D / #2-Andrew Campbell-D
#5-Dustin Kohn-D / #7 Patrick Mullen-D
#6-Jesse Joensuu-LW / #21 Dwight King-LW
#17-Matt Martin-RW / #9-Bud Holloway-RW
#24-David Ullstrom-C / #15-Justin Azevedo-C
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