Categories: Sports

Working the penalty kill early in the first period Wednesday night against the Binghamton Senators, Albany Devils left wing Reid Boucher intercepted a pass at his blue line and broke in alone on goalie Chris Driedger. After one deke, he buried a wrister to give Albany a 1-0 lead.

Early in the second period, Boucher took a pass at the top of the left faceoff circle from center Joseph Blandisi, spun and shot. Blandisi swept in to bang home the rebound to extend the Devils’ lead in what would be a 2-1 Albany win. Mike Sislo also got an assist.

Those plays don’t happen a week or so ago.

Boucher, Sislo and Blandisi were still up with the New Jersey Devils.





So were fellow forwards Pavel Zacha and Blake Pie­tila, and defensemen Damon Severson, Seth Helgeson and Vojtech Mozik — all also now with Albany.

Yes, the cavalry has arrived, a collection of new-yet-familiar faces.

“You can see all three of them — Severson, Blandisi, Boucher — were at an NHL pace,” Devils coach Rick Kowalsky said afterward. “It’s contagious on the bench.”

With New Jersey out of the playoffs, the parent club has dispatched a surfeit of talent to Albany. If you can’t win a Stanley Cup, you might as well go after that Calder one.

And for weeks, there’s been 1995 talk around this this Devils team. For those who don’t remember, that was the spring the Times Union Center’s rafters rocked as the Albany River Rats, another incarn­ation of a Devils’ AHL affiliate, won the Calder Cup.

Most of those dispatched players spent time this year in Albany, 44-20-8-2 and locked into second place in the North Division with 98 points, trailing only the American Hockey League-leading Toronto Mar­lies (110 points). But now they are all together here at once, for the most part healthy, giving the Devils a legitimate chance to make a title run.

“If we play our game for 60 minutes,” Sislo said, “we can beat anybody.”

The biggest difference between this Devils team and past years is not only individual talent, but depth. Sislo said Albany can come at teams “in waves,” while Kowalsky will have the option – no, mandate — of being able to tinker with his lineup by series depending on need (scoring, size, defense, etc.).

And tinker Kowalsky will do. He says he is not much of a juggler of balls and such, but by definition, juggling is the job of an AHL coach. “We’ve had guys come in and out all year,” he said Wednesday. “You deal with injuries. You deal with call-ups . . . lineups change.”

Kowalsky has been the coach of the Albany Devils since their inception in 2010, when the River Rats headed south for Charlotte. This is his third straight winning season, but only the second playoff appearance for the Devils. The Albany Devils have yet to win a postseason series.

But Kowalsky is doing something right: He is this year’s American Hockey League coach of the year. He is staying up late and waking up earlier trying to figure out how to deploy all the assets he could ask for heading into the postseason.

He is running through various combinations of lines and power play units and defensive pairings in his head. There is a mathematical formula that could tell you all the possibilities. I don’t know it, and I’m not going to figure it out.

Let’s just say given the talent here, it’s a high number.

“I haven’t had to think about line combinations all year,” he said. “The imagination tends to run wild.

“It’s a good problem to have.”

And this is a good team. Perhaps even a great team. Starting late next week, when the playoffs begin (the opponent and dates will be sorted out this weekend), we will start to find out.

RG III PART II

The Tennessee Titans made a brilliant move. The Los Angeles Rams made a move they had to make.

In a trade announced Thursday, Tennessee dealt the No. 1 overall pick, as well as its fourth- and sixth-round picks in the upcoming NFL Draft, to Los Angeles for the Rams’ first-round pick (No. 15), two second-round picks, a third-round pick and their first-round and third-round picks in 2017. If this sounds familiar, it should: The Rams got a boatload of picks in 2012 from the Washington Redskins, who traded up for Robert Griffin III.

What goes around . . .

For the Titans, who were expected to take Mississippi offensive tackle Laremy Tunsil first overall, the blockbuster is a coup. There are tackles to be had in the middle of the first round — and they can still trade back up if they target a player such at Notre Dame offensive tackle Ronnie Stanley, expected to go in the 6-11 range. They certainly have the ammunition now.

As for the Rams, they need a quarterback — did you really believe the talk about Case Keenum? — and to make a splash upon returning to L.A. Their likely target now is North Dakota State QB Carson Wentz, with California quarterback Jared Goff an outside possibility. Both would have been long gone by 15.

This deal is a definite win for the Titans. As for the Rams, we will have to wait and see. But if Wentz turns into a franchise quarterback, then even the ransom the Rams paid would have been worth it.

SHOWTIME RETURNS FOR A FINALE

Kobe Bryant missed 30 shots Wednesday night, counting two from the foul line.

Thirty.

And it was awesome.

Debate all you want where he ranks all-time (it is a great debate), but his 60-point swan song delivered just what the crowd and NBA fans wanted. It was a perfect career epitaph.

Kobe hoisted. Kobe drove. Kobe got one last game out his drained body. His dreadful Los Angeles Lakers even won.

The same night, the Golden State Warriors eclipsed the 1995-96 Chicago Bulls’ unbreakable record with their 73rd win. But the night, one last night, belonged to Black Mamba.

And, as he said, now he is out.