Wednesday, October 24, 2012

Wednesday Practice Update 10/24

Good news on the personnel front. Defenseman Marc-Andre Bourdon made his way through a whole practice this morning at Glens Falls Civic Center and head coach Terry Murray doesn't see a reason why he wouldn't be able to return to the line-up for Adirondack's three-in-three this weekend.

Bourdon hadn't been through a full practice in more than a week after he suffered an undisclosed upper-body injury. He skated with the team for about 30 minutes yesterday and went through an off-ice workout, but had no problems. Tye McGinn was also back out there after leaving Tuesday's practice with a hand injury, but Murray said he's also good to go. So everyone's healthy at this time.

Story in tomorrow's paper about the team's new line combinations, which I Tweeted out earlier this morning. They're a little further down this post, too. Anyway, I went with the following hypothesis.

If I asked you what the Adirondack Phantoms' top line was on Opening Night, there was a pretty clear answer: Brayden Schenn, Sean Couturier and Matthew Ford. Now, as Murray and the team try and find lines that click well together, he's shuffled them up. If I asked you the same question today, you could give me two or three answers to that question and I think any of them would be correct.

Roe-Johnston-Zolnierczyk
McGinn-Couturier-Mangene
Harper-Schenn-Wellwood
Rinaldo-Bordson-Holmstrom
Brown-Testwuide-Ford

Now suppose you're Albany Devils coach Rick Kowalsky and you want to have Adam Larsson  defend Adirondack's top line. Who do you send him out against? Schenn? Couturier? You can only defend one of them at even strength, so it makes more sense for the Phantoms to split the two up.

“We have four solid, capable scoring lines, which is pretty exciting,” Phantoms winger Shane Harper said. “It’s fun to play in and fun to watch. Anybody who’s out there is a threat to score."

More after practice tomorrow. Then we'll have the pregame post from Albany Friday night.

Until next time,
MC

0 Comments:

Post a Comment

Subscribe to Post Comments [Atom]

<< Home