While the rest of us were passing out on the couch after consuming too much turkey Julien BriseBois was prepping for the return of Andrei Vasilevskiy. That unfortunately required placing back-up netminder Matt Tomkins on waivers for the purpose of assigning him to the Syracuse Crunch in the AHL.
After a circuitous route to the NHL, the 29-year-old finally got his chance. He okay in his three starts, going 1-2 with a 3.40 GAA and .889 save percentage. After losing 5-2 to Ottawa and 4-2 to Columbus, he finally picked up some goal support in a 5-3 victory over Montreal. He allowed a total of 10 goals against and expected 8.84, but most importantly, he kept the Lightning in the games he started.
He is likely to clear waivers and help the Crunch bring some stability to the goaltending arena. With Hugo Alnefelt back to health and Pytor Kochetkov in Carolina for the foreseeable future it will be nice to have a reliable duo in net and not need to keep signing ECHL players to PTOs.
Lightning / NHL News
Taylor Hall out for the season [Second City Hockey]
One of the veteran scorers the ‘Hawks were relying on to take the pressure off of Connor Bedard is out for the season. Taylor Hall will have surgery on his ailing knee and that will end his season. Anthony Athanasiou was also placed on IR with a groin issue. It did pave the way for former Bolt prospect Cole Guttman to get called up from Rockford.
Corey Perry not with the team after healthy scratch [Chicago Sun-Times]
It wasn’t a great Thursday for Chicago as old friend Corey Perry, who was a healthy scratch for their Wednesday game, was not with the team on Thursday. The organization had announced that they aren’t going to provide any further information and will keep things internal. Hopefully as is well for The Worm and his family.
John Klingberg on LTIR [Sportsnet]
The Leafs free agent signing has not had the best of years, and it officially got worse on Thursday as the team announced he was placed on LTIR.
32 Thoughts [Sportsnet]
Possible Global Series game in Germany next year? Was it a coincidence that the NBA team owned by a suitor of an NHL franchise got to reveal one of the Winter Classic sweaters? Answers in Friedman’s weekly 32 columns.
