Freaky Friday

Remind us never to mention how strange things can get covering New York Ranger or New York Islander prospects because it just winds up getting stranger.

The theme for Friday night might as well be "How to blow a lead without really trying." We kid you not as we had 6 games where leads were blown, 4 games where teams tried to give away leads and 2 come from behind wins.

12 games out of 16 where we are trying to picture John Tortorella not becoming totally unglued. We know that we try to watch as much as we can and by the time we got to the west coast; it was just too much insanity to keep watching.

The game of the night which we really had to point out was the Barrie Colts and Guelph Storm as this was a game where Barrie had a 6-0 lead with 7 minutes remaining. Safe enough to move on to another game right?

This is taken from the scoresheet (here is the box score):

Penalty- Barrie- Brendan Bell (promise not the one you think) Highsticking 11:10
Penalty- Barrie- Norm Ezekiel Cross Checking 11:46
Penalty- Barrie- Tanner Pearson Tripping 11:46

(now since you are only allowed to be down 2 players at a time then the 3rd penalty does not start until Bell's ended which led to this)

Goal- Guelph M. Finn 13:34 PP
Goal- Guelph S. Kosmachuk 14:01 PP
Goal- Guelph C McNaughton 14:12 EV
Goal- Guelph T Richard 14:43 EV

If you did the math then you already knew that was 4 goals in 1:09 to make it 6-4. Guelph scored again to make it 6-5 and of course we turned back in time to watch Barrie score to put the game on ice.

But this was how the night went and we wanted to give you an example of it because like we said all over the place leads were being blown. So we promise never to say we have seen everything because we fear how a night like this could be topped.

We did have some good news as if you are an Islander fan so start with this

Islanders First Star Ryan Strome

Ryan Strome (2011 1st) put up a 4 point (1-3-4) night to help his Niagara IceDogs to a 5-3 win over the Mississauga St. Michaels Majors. Strome showing why the Islander took him in the first round as each of his point either tied the score or broke the tie as the IceDogs had to come from behind to earn a 5-3 win.

The Islander report which has 3 stars can be found right here.

Rangers First Star Christian Thomas
Christian Thomas (2010 2nd) has clearly killed off any signs of his early season slump with a 2-1-3 performance. Sadly Thomas and his Oshawa Generals were one of the 6 teams to blow leads.

The Ranger report which has 2 stars and news of a condition (we are not sure what to call it) that led to Andrew Yogan leaving his game can be found right here. 

And since we had a strange night then if you are an American hockey fan please look at who tonight's stars are. Now picture Ryan Strome and Christian Thomas as linemates on Team Canada as it is a very good possibility.

Strome is a center, Thomas a right wing and if we are Don Hay the coach of Canada then we put a big left winger like a Brett Bulmer and Canada has one extremely lethal line. OK you Canadians stop circling New Year's Eve as we know USA/Canada is becoming an almost annual war.

(Strome- Aaron Bell of OHL Images)