In short, it’s been crazy in Hamilton. Things looked really bad when the Canadiens had to call up a pile of players which left the Bulldogs seriously undermanned. They couldn’t call up players from the ECHL because there’s only one player under contract with the franchise and that’s Robert Mayer (who is a goalie), so they were left to grab random players off the street sign several players to PTO contracts. The result, as you can imagine, wasn’t pretty. It’s not say that the guys signed to PTO contracts were bad. It’s just when you’re missing half your normal roster, it’s not going to be pretty. The Bulldogs wound up dropping two games at home – the first time this year that they’ve dropped back-to-back games in regulation time. Their 1-0 loss against the Houston Aeros also marked the first time they’d been blanked this season.

I could sit here writing up every gory detail of the losses, but that’s just depressing. Instead, I’ll just go into every detail about the Bulldogs next three games because they were just that awesome. Like, new franchise records awesome.

After getting David Desharnais back from his very brief stay with the Canadiens the Bulldogs packed their bags headed off to Cleveland for back-to-back games against the Lake Erie Monsters (the baby Avalanche). Ben Maxwell opened the scoring on the powerplay midway through the first period. His shot was apparently so amazingly awesome that nobody knew that he actually scored a goal. Everyone thought it went off the crossbar when it actually had hit the post in the back of the net. At this point the Bulldogs were about to get a penalty when the referee decided to check with the goal judge on whether Maxwell had finally broken his scoreless streak. Surprisingly enough, the goal was awarded to the Bulldogs. Yay! So the Bulldogs got a goal and the Monsters didn’t get a powerplay. Needless to say, their fans weren’t so happy. But anyway, Frederic St. Denis would get his first goal of the season 5 minutes later when Monsters goalie Tyler Weiman couldn’t control a rebound off of a shot by PK Subban. The second period had just gotten underway and the Monsters PA guy was saying something when Mathieu Carle walked in on Weiman and wristed a shot over his shoulder. Oopsies. With less than four minutes to go in the second period, Mike Glumac would get his first goal of the season without Desharnais being on the ice at the same time. I know that sounds ridiculous, but if you look, you’ll see that all of Glumac’s goals have either been assisted by Desharnais or have come when Desharnais has at least been on the ice at the same time as Glumac. Fine, so I’m the only who finds this to be a step in the right direction for last year’s leading goal scorer. Anyway, that was it from the scoring. The only minor concern was that Curtis Sanford did not come back out to finish the third period between the pipes. He was suffering from back spasms (this has happened before) and so Cedrick Desjardins came to finish the game. He stopped all eight shots that he faced and the Bulldogs ended up shutting out the not-so-scary Monsters.

If that was a nice way to come back from two disappointing losses, just wait. It would get better. After remaining scoreless for the first 35 minutes, Desharnais got the Bulldogs on the scoreboard. Too bad players can’t get assists on their own goals because he took a shot at the Monsters goalie (Trevor Cann was in nets), picked up his own rebound and fired it the puck into the back of the net. I think there’s something up with the Monsters’s PA guy talking and Bulldogs scoring goals, because just as the PA was announcing Desharnais’s goal, Ryan Russel skated up into the Monsters’ zone and shot the puck over Cann’s right shoulder. Brock Trotter had the game’s most entertaining goal as he scored while falling over (in his defense, he was tripped). In case you aren’t keeping track here, that’s three goals in less than three minutes from the Bulldogs. The Monsters dominated the third period, but Desjardins stopped everything to earn his second shutout of the season. It was a really nice way to celebrate the Bulldogs 500th win.

So… yes, that would be back-to-back shutouts for the Bulldogs. Yes, that would be back-to-back wins for the first time since October, if you can believe that. And YES, it gets even better. Seriously! Would I lie?

After enjoying almost a week off (in which they also got J.T. Wyman back from the Canadiens), the Bulldogs hosted the hated Toronto Marlies. I’m serious about that “hated” bit. They really don’t like the Marlies in Hamilton. Which is fine by me because we all know that the Marlies are the Baby Leafs (boooo!). The Marlies came out really flat. Their goalie was probably the only reason why the score was relatively close. Mind you, he seems to have a thing about giving up goals late in periods. Brock Trotter scored late in the first period. PK Subban would tally late in the second period (after drawing what should have been a penalty for the Marlies). Aaaaaaand PK Subban scored into the empty net with just under a minute to go. It marked his first two-goal game and also the Bulldogs first shorthanded goal of the season. Oh and it marked the end of the Marlies for that night. Desjardins would get his third shutout of the season. Whooo!!!

So where does this franchise record stuff come in? First off, this was the first time the Bulldogs had three consecutive shutouts in their 14 seasons. This put their 198 minutes and 51 seconds as the new record for time elapsed without giving up a goal  (it’s actually longer once you tally in the 8:30 it took before the Marlies scored the next night). Second, Desjardins extended his personal shutout record to 158:51 which is 42 seconds longer than the record set by Olivier Michaud back in 2003-2004.  Annnnd the Bulldogs came really close to setting another record for the least amount of shots on goal given up in a game, but they wound up with three too many for that record. I think there was another almost-record in there too, but I can’t remember what it was…. oh well, it wasn’t a record so it’s okay if I forgot, right? Right.

And yeah… I could mention that they lost a whacky game to the Marlies the next night in Toronto, but that’d be no fun. We’ll just end on a high note. Which is… new franchise records for the Bulldogs are awesome! YAAAAAAY!

With all the great news coming out of Hamilton recently, it seems like a huge travesty to actually have to talk about the Voltigeurs. You see, they’re being faily right now. Super faily, to be exact. Since I last wrote about them (in which we finished on a positive note as they beat the Halifax Mooseheads), they went on an east coast road trip that went rather like the Habs western road-trip at the beginning of the year. Yeah, it went that badly. They lost 5-1, 4-2, 10-2 (yes, 10-2), came back home and lost 6-5, before finally winning 6-1 and they just followed that up with a 6-3 loss last night.

Amidst all this losing, it hasn’t been all faily for Gabriel Dumont who had 4 goals and  2 assists over the stretch of almost complete fail. He’s also continuing his streak of taking at least one penalty a game. Last I checked, he’s second in PIM on his team with 60 minutes in 26 games. At least he’s third on his team in points though.

Philippe Lefebvre meanwhile, has been stone cold. I really wish he would get back to scoring or at least getting points via assisting on a goal or something. So far, no such luck. We’ll have to wait and see if he can snap out of this. I believe he’s still right behind Dumont in points though. Someone tell him to hurry up and get some more goals before the other players catch up to him!

….

And that’s it for this week. One day I will see what’s going on with the Habs’ two baby goalies in the OHL.