#brianfreeman

#currentlyreading #thewatcher #brianfreeman #crime #bookstagram #sofarsogood #thriller

Infinite by Brian Freeman was a February Amazon First Reads pick. What would happen if you could go back and make different choices? Freeman gives us the character of Dylan Moran who is caught in a dark depression after a car accident that claimed the life of his wife. He meets a psychiatrist who introduces him to the Many Worlds and sends him there hoping to find his wife. But instead he finds another Dylan who has become a serial killer. It'll take a Dylan to stop a Dylan. Initially this book felt like a rehash of Dark Matter - another multiverse story. But Freeman quickly moves into his own fast-paced story. You wonder if Dylan can stop his doppelganger. And Freeman makes you question what is real and what might be a dream. The unexpected ending explains it. Great tension in the last third of the book. Some nice resolution from Freeman. #infinite #brianfreeman #amazonfirstreads #kindlereads #netgalley #thomasandmercer #bookstagram #bookshelves #booknerd #bookhoarder #bookworm #sodacityreads #bookish #bookreview #hardcover #novel #bookaddict #bookcover #bookhaul #bibliophile #goodreads #homelibrary #fiction #crimefiction #thriller https://www.instagram.com/p/CM4mQwqLmwq/?igshid=gchlapbcd8rx

BY: Gerry Cantlon, Howlings HARTFORD, CT - It’s a big night for hockey in Hartford for the UCONN Huskies are on the verge of breaking another Hockey East barrier. They have a home-and-home with the UMASS-Amherst Minutemen starting with Senior Night festivities at 7 PM (WCCT-CW Channel 20) and then tomorrow night at the Mullins Center at 7 PM (NESN PLUS) to close out the regular season schedule. UCONN enters the weekend tied for fourth place in the crowded Hockey East standings. The Huskies have 24 points, their best-ever point total since joining the conference in 2014, and are even with UMASS-Lowell. UCONN is a mere point behind the third-place University of Maine, and two points behind the second-place UMASS-Amherst. UCONN is four points back of the first-place Boston College, who knocked Merrimack, 6-1. A weekend sweep could put the Huskies in the top four guaranteeing a first-round, home playoff game next weekend. The reason UCONN is standing on the edge of this goal is the superlative effort on the road last week to beat BU 6-1 last Saturday sweeping their first Hockey East series of the year. Perfect time to do so. It was tight game 2-1 for UCONN when the floodgates opened and the Huskies swarmed all over BU and on all their key opportunities, they didn’t miss the net. The play that set the Huskies superb second third period in motion was a 10-bell-save from sophomore Tomas Vomacka that he made on Dave Farrance off a three-on-two late in the first period. Vomacka was down-and-out and completely vulnerable. He reached out with his glove and snatched a sure goal away from Farrance The first of three goals by senior Alexander Payusov came with linemate Brian Freeman in the slot in front with a screen. Payusov was able to obtain his own rebound for the goal. 41 seconds into the third, Payusov tallied their second goal of the evening as the Russian from Montreal motored like an Acela train through the middle of the ice, lowered his left shoulder and went wide on BU’s defenseman Alex Vlasic. Payusov fired a 35-foot wrister past goalie Ashton Abel and gave the team a 3-1 lead. UCONN never looked back. Freeman then used a time-honored flip pass to Payusov and he marched in and fired a shot five-hole on Abel and a strong 4-1 lead. The Huskies upped the lead to 5-1 with a fantastic powerplay where all five players on the ice touched the puck. Freeman among the conference-best in faceoff percentage cleanly won the draw. Then Jake Flynn was at the left point and sent it over to Jonny Evans at the right point, then down low to Ruslan Iskhakov. Iskhakov spotted Payusov on the doorstep and got the puck and made a blind backhanded pass to Freeman, who was in the shooter's position on one knee on his off-wing. He drove it into the open left side for a 5-1 commanding lead. The exclamation point came with Justin Howell with 48.3 seconds left winning a one on one battle with BU’s Alex Wise got around and fired a great short side, on the stick-side. The high-wrister on Abel went in to close out the game. Freeman’s two goals and five assists (seven points) earned him Hockey East Player-Of-The-Week, the first one of the season. He has taken over the team-lead in scoring with career-best 26 points on the year on seven goals and 16 assists.  Over the last five games, Freeman has 11 points on the strength of three goals and eight assists. UCONN with a player in any of Top 20 of stats has played a team game and has put themselves in this position that is a mountain that in early January seemed couldn’t be climbed. The Huskies lineup features six 20-point scorers with Payusov having 12 goals, seven coming over the last five games. Freshman Vladislav Firstov who has 23 points on 11 goals and 12 assists and fifth among freshmen scoring in Hockey East. Sophomore Carter Turnbull scored his 11th goal of the season and tied Firstov for the team lead in goals scored.  Turnbull has 23 points on the season, and has had at least a point in eight of his last nine games.  Over that stretch, he has five goals and seven assists. Sophomores Jachym Kondelik eight goals and 13 assists and Iskhakov nine goals and 11 assists round out the UConn 20-point scorers.  There are 12 Huskies who have double digit points and nine different players have scored five or more goals. Senior defenseman Wyatt Newpower is eighth among Hockey East blue-liners with a career-best 19 points with three goals and 16 assists.  He leads the Huskies as a plus 23 on the season, ranking fifth nationally. UCONN is now 7-1-0 over their last eight Hockey East games coming into the weekend. UCONN came back to beat BU in overtime, 4-3, at home last Friday a game they shouldn’t have won. Since joining the Hockey East, UCONN and UMASS have face-off 12 times with the Minutemen holding a slim 6-5-1 edge. In last season's regular season finale, UCONN knocked off the then number two ranked Minutemen, marking the highest-ranked opponent the Huskies have ever beaten. They had previously knocked-off the number three ranked team in the nation when they beat Boston College at home (1-0) in 2014 and a road win over then number three ranked UMASS-Lowell (3-2) in 2016. NOTES: -It will be Senior night with Payusov, Freeman. Newpower, Howell and Bryan Nelson. They will be honored before the game. All fans are encouraged to wear white shirts for the game. -Former Husky Spencer Nass was traded from the Idaho Steelheads (ECHL) to the Kalamazoo K-Wings. Read the full article

BY: Gerry Cantlon, Howlings HARTFORD, CT - The hockey gods were in Hartford Friday night. The Huskies were outplayed in the final 39 of the game's 40 minutes. They made the last 1:19 of play count and won 4-3 in overtime on Sasha’s Payusov’s game-winner 19 seconds into overtime. BU’s Patrick Curry turnover went to Brian Freeman on the left-wing and he sent the pass across to Payusov and he put his 12th of the season and second game-winner into the net for the victory and sending the crowd of 5,653 into a frenzy. “Freezie made a great play. He got the puck, made the pass and it was an easy tap in goal,” Payusov said with a wide grin of his second game-winner of the season. For Freeman, he knew exactly what he wanted to do the minute he got the puck. “That was some of the chemistry Sasha and I have developed over the years. I knew he was going to be crashing the net. He was right behind the goalie and put it in for us.” For head coach Mike Cavanaugh, it's nice when the hockey gods shine on you. “Hockey gods reward teams that play the right way. I think we're a team that plays the right way. We continually put pucks in deep and Ben went to the net and we got a shot and that’s how you have to play the game. Look at all the goals scored tonight, except the first one by BU, everything else was from within three feet of the net, that’s where you have to play the game.” The Huskies knew that crashing the net for the tying goal would be required as they got a six-on-five when UCONN pulled starter Tomas Vomacka, and during a previous timeout assistant coach, Joe Periera, a West Haven-native drew it up and it worked. The Terriers had the Huskies hemmed in with a victory within their grasp, but UCONN snatched it away. UCONN’s got it down to the right-wing half wall to Jachym Kondelik and he snapped a shot from on top of the right-wing circle that Sam Tucker stopped, but Freeman was lurking behind the goal line and hid his 6’5 frame and was able to use his reach and batted the rebound behind Tucker with 56 seconds left in the regulation. “Coach Periera drew up the play and we put the puck on Jachym. (He) got a great shot on the play. I really wasn’t supposed to be there, but I was glad I was,“ Freeman laughed as he thought of the turn of events on the game-tying play. “I was just trying to get into it. I just waited for Jachym to shoot the puck and it was just laying there. I was in a soft spot just fortunate enough to put it home.” For Mike Cavanaugh, the sense of escaping with two precious points was there as he was decompressing from the wild turn of events. “Clearly, I was happy with the win in kind of a unique game. We came out and played very well in the first. Tomas played well, made some saves. The second was completely the opposite. In the third, not a lot was happening as BU they’re a good team, kept us from getting to the blue paint area. We lost a tough game in OT last week (in Maine) because we sat back and I told the kids this week if we get to overtime and we will let not sit back. Incredibly, that happened tonight and when we tied it up that’s all the kids talked about on the bench,” remarked Cavanaugh. His counterpart, Albie O’ Connell was composed, but clearly trying to process what had just happened to the Terriers, who despite playing an excellent road game, came out on the short end of the stick. “When you play good and you feel you played a good game, and you get that in the last minute and then they score again, it really gets to you. It shows you gotta play the full-60 and overall, we played a good game. You can’t take away what they did. We had four guys around the puck (on the game-tying goal) counting the goalie, we had five. At some point, you gotta protect your goal. That’s something we have to work on and get better from,” remarked O’Connell, who was coming off the heels of a loss to Northeastern in the Beanpot final in OT. Doubt was not in UCONN’s mind despite what seemed like dire circumstances. “We were down, but we never thought about losing. We wanted to win and we got it. We have a lot of guys who can score goals here. We never doubted,” remarked Payusov, who spoke with a degree of certitude when battling for a playoff spot. For Ben Freeman, he was certain of the outcome despite what the scoreboard said. “We never wavered. There were ebbs and flows in the second period we were very resilient tonight." A TV timeout aided the Huskies as well. “We had a little meeting and got that TV timeout. We got back to the bench and said we need to calm down and stick to our game plan and we came right out afterward,” Payusov, a senior, stated. It was also after BU had kept them pinned in their own end of the ice and came close to getting the insurance goal. UCONN has an early chance at the left side of the net to tie the game as Payusov put a shot on net that the grad transfer from Yale, goalie, Sam Tucker, (Wilton) stuck out his right pad and stopped at 2:45. The first period belonged to UCONN. The second belonged to BU as they scored three times to take the lead. Case McCarthy launched a shot from the right point. It went off the top of Vomacka’s glove and into the net at 4:26 to cut the lead to one. The Terriers persistently broke the Huskies down, dumping the puck and being physical on the forecheck and got their second goal halfway through the period. BU freshmen, Robert Mastrosomine, went around a stick check from Harrison Rees waited for the last second and sent a perfect net-front short pass to Jack DeBoer who easily smacked home his third goal of the season. Then late in the period BU’s Patrick Curry, behind the net unchecked, fished a backhand pass through the box to Cam Crotty at the right point. He beat an open right side that was left by Vomacka as he came out to challenge the shot at 17:35 for his third of the season. The first period was all UCONN. The Huskies took a 1-0 and no surprise Carter Turnbull scored it. In the left-wing corner, he out-muscled two Terriers, went to the net and slipped the puck between the legs of a third Terrier, retrieved and jammed it in on the forehand at 11:12 for his 11th goal and the 1-0 lead. UCONN tallied a second on the powerplay. The red-hot Wyatt Newpower from the right point drilled a low shot. Tucker made the save despite a screen of Kale Howarth, but he had a solid position in front and swept the puck into the net for his fourth goal of the year. UCONN had a decided edge in shots at 15-9, but Vomacka made the saves that kept BU off the board. Early in the game, he stopped an open Logan Cockerill took a pass from Jeff Wise who was behind the Huskies net, but Vomacka glove hand snatched away a sure goal at.5:32 Then late in the period he twice stymied Curry had hit the side of the net and in a net-front scramble, he found the puck with 20.9 seconds to go. Then with 3.9 seconds left New Canaan’s Patrick Harper was on the right-wing as a lefty shot took a cross-ice from Trevor Zegras, a fellow Avon Old Farms alum, but Vomacka again had the glove hand low to the ice and scooped up the shot. NOTES: The UCONN Huskies record is now at the .500 mark at 13-13-4, 10-8-2 HEA. Boston University drops to 12-10-8, 9-6-5 HEA. UCONN is in sixth place, one point behind the Terriers, with 22 points and are two behind Maine in fourth place who beat Vermont 6-1. Boston College destroyed Northeastern 10-1 last night. The Huskies and Terriers travel to Boston for a rematch at 7 PM at the Agganis Arena at BU on NESN. Terriers' Ethan Phillips from Dartmouth, Nova Scotia. His parents have been the billet for two NHL first-rounders with the Halifax Mooseheads (QMJHL), Swiss-born Nico Hirschier (Devils) and Czech native, Filip Zadina (Red Wings). Terriers have several sons of former players skating on their team. Jamie Armstrong is the son of Bill Armstrong, who played for the Bruins. Gabriel Chabot, his father Frederic Chabot, Jack DeBoer's father is Peter DeBoer is the head coach of the NHL Las Vegas Golden Knights. Former Husky, Max Letunov, in his second NHL game scored his first NHL goal against Edmonton on a three-on-two rush winding up with the puck and turning and firing it into the net on ex-Sound Tiger Mikko Koskinen. He was returned to the AHL San Jose Barracuda where he is having a breakout season on the last-place team. Read the full article

BY: Gerry Cantlon, Howlings HARTFORD, CT - For the UCONN Huskies it was like a “playoff game” as their hockey ended their season with a wild 4-3 win over the number two nationally ranked UMASS Minuteman before a boisterous and exceptionally loud crowd of 5,035 that rocked the XL Center Friday night. UCONN finishes with an overall record of 12-20-2 and 7-15-2 in Hockey East. The Minutemen, the regular season conference champion, finishes their regular season record of 26-8-0 and 18-6-0 in Hockey East. They will host the ninth-ranked University of New Hampshire in the first round of the playoffs next weekend. “Sometimes it takes a bit longer to finds your rhythm and competitiveness. I was reading about that with (coach) Brad Stevens of the Celtics. I feel if the season was a month longer, we would be playing in the Hockey East playoffs for sure.  Overall, I was so happy for our seniors, Miles (Gendron), Max (Kalter), AND Karl (El-Mir) for everything we stand for, to have them graduate, make them better men, and we wanted to compete for trophies. "I was impressed by how they brought this group along very easy. When you have 12 younger guys it can go sideways and be a train wreck. What they did to keep this group competitive the last month of the season, we finished 5-3. I can’t say enough about their leadership. They got a well-deserved win tonight,” remarked head coach Mike Cavanaugh. Beating UMASS, who eliminated them from playoff contention two weeks ago, was icing on the cake for UCONN in a season that saw some successes and some failures. “That was very special for all us seniors. We love it. They're a great team over there. To beat the number two team in the nation was unimaginable two months ago. I’m so proud of everybody how we held together.” senior Max Kalter said with an enormous smile. The game-winning tally came against the third Minuteman goalie of the night for UMASS, Brad Avanaitas. UMASS pulled Avanaitas for the sixth attacker with 1:38 left, but UCONN's team defense held the fort allowing the team to end their season on a winning note. In the final five minutes, the UCONN team defense had two key shot blocks. The first was by Ruslan Iskharov on the goal line and Miles Gendron. Then add in Kale Howarth’s tight checking of the ever-dangerous, Cale Makar, that forced him to dish off the puck. Tomas Vomacka made an amazing lateral save on Brett Boeing’s bid to tie the game kept UMASS at bay and secured a win. “Ruslan made a block. Adam (Karaschik) had a block. Kale's check on Makar forced him to chip it out to the neutral zone. We also did a good job clearing out any rebounds. It was a very good defensive effort,” remarked Cavanaugh. One of the seniors he referenced, Kalter, was pumped about that sequence of play by his team. “That what it takes to win,” Kalter said. “We have gotten better each year here, and over the last month the program has been stepping up every year, and I think this group (2019-20 edition) is going to go far, so there will be more great things for this program.” Kalter hopes to continue to go forward to pro hockey and could likely see him debut in the ECHL in the very near future. For Gendron, taking off his UCONN white home jersey was not going to be easy. His sweater has a "C" stitched on in the upper left corner. It meant more than people could realize on the surface. “It’s really special the guys voted me for this,” said an emotional Gendron. “It just wasn’t handed to me and that means everything. I’m so very proud of these guys. We wanted to be the first group to win a playoff game. We fell short, but tonight this was our playoff game and we won it. "I have faith in this group. They are going to do it next year, and the crowd, that was amazing. To come here and cheer for us when we have nothing to play for…. It makes me realize even more I made the right choice to come here.” The win, coming through a very emotional and entertaining game, showed how UMASS will be such a post-season force. They picked up right where they left off in the second period scoring at 45 seconds in. Mitchell Chaffee took the pass from Mario Ferraro in the left wing corner. He was able to curl away from Ben Freeman, zip across the crease and stuffed his second straight goal (17th) into the net. UMASS head coach Greg Carvel didn’t let his team off the hook. “Congratulations to the UCONN seniors in winning their last game. For my team, it was a very uneven game. We didn’t come out to play in the first, and we finally wanted to play (late in the second). I sat down a few kids who didn’t want to play. We tied it up in the third, but that next shot right after that was a backbreaker. We couldn’t find a way to win the rest of the third. It was very disconcerting to me as a coach that on March 8th we can’t find a way to be excited to play a game.” UCONN answered back 36 seconds after UMASS tallied as Freeman came across the Minuteman blue line. He sent a high wrist shot that went off Filip Lundeberg’s glove and into the net to give the Huskies back. It would be a 4-3 lead that they never relinquished. “They score late in the second with point two seconds to go and score on the first shift in the third, everything was going their way, but we were able to flip the script and get the momentum back and got the victory,” said Cavanaugh. UMASS tried to switch their fortunes by putting Filip Lundberg in the net to start the second period. It didn’t faze the Huskies. UMASS put on strong pressure with three solid scoring chances in the first two minutes as Boening, Maker, and Chaffe was each denied. The Huskies struck for their third goal and a highly unlikely 3-0 lead. Again all three forwards were in on the goal like the Huskies second goal. Kalter sent the puck to an open Jonny Evans on the left wing. He made a gorgeous, blind pitchfork backhanded pass to Iskharov who then fired his sixth goal over Lundberg's glove hand at 8:08. They seemingly had UMASS in a vise grip. UMASS is not number two in the nation by accident. In the final two minutes of the period, the team tallied twice narrowing the gap to one goal. After a ticky-tacky holding call from the ref who was at center ice, Thomas Fryer, the Minutemen’s Hobey Baker candidate, and Makar, a Colorado Avalanche draft pick, displayed why he is so highly regarded. He had a discussion prior to a face-off with Bobby Trivigno. UMASS won the draw and began a perfect cycle. Makar got the puck at the left point and fed Trivigno at the right point. They then switched positions and as he was transitioning, Makar passed the puck to Jacob Pritchard at the right side of the net. The left-handed shooter was left unchecked and wired a pass to Trivigno who came in through the back door on the left side and made a perfect open-blade redirect at 18:48 for his ninth goal and got UMASS on the scoreboard but trailing 3-1. UMASS kept the pressure on UCONN and scored in the waning seconds with Makar again involved, Makar sent a pass to Marc Del Gaizo at the left. With a perfect screen by Chaffee in front on starter Tomas Vomacka, deflected the 55-foot shot past Vomacka with just .02 seconds left in the period to make it a 3-2 game with what could have been a dagger to UCONN’s valiant game long effort. “That is the mark of a good program. No matter what score the score is, and what period it is, we stuck to the game plan and kept competing,” said Cavanaugh. The Huskies struck first against the second best team in the nation as all three forwards on the line touched the puck in the red zone. Brian Rigali made a strong move on the left wing and got around his check. He swung to the right wing side and his shot was stopped by Matt Murray. The puck hit the back of his skate, and the Huskies' Kale Howarth had a crack at it. Then Brian Freeman was able to chip the puck into the net for his sixth goal at 8:24. The Huskies kept pace with the swift-skating Minutemen getting back pressure support and not allowing for second and third chances. “It was a point of emphasis this week that we were back pressuring them and we didn’t give up many odd-man rushes and not slowing them to enter the (offensive) zone uncontested,” Cavanaugh said in speaking of their game plan of trying to lasso the high-end and fast skating UMASS squad that operates so effectively as five-man units. When UMASS broke Vomacka, a Czech freshman who was making his seventh start in the last nine UCONN games, was there to make the save. For Vomacka it was his 14th UCONN game of the season. The Huskies were able to extend their lead to 2-0 before the end of the period. Rigali scored with Iskharov on a shorthanded two-on-one. He was able to settle down a bouncing puck and got around a sliding Del Gaizo and zipped his fifth goal through the five-hole at 17:51. NOTES: Huska's leaving UCONN made him the sixth netminder this year for the Hartford Wolf Pack. Huska was the New York Rangers' 7th round pick (184th overall) in the 2015 NHL draft. He played junior hockey for the Green Bay Gamblers (USHL). Huska played just two games for UCONN over the final six weeks of the season because of Vomacka's hot play. He last played against Providence College on February 26th. His stats for the season are deceiving. Huska posted a 5-13-2 record with a 3.34 GAA and .896 save percentage in 1,202:44 minutes of action. He was playing behind a very young team composed of 12 freshmen. One his highlight starts came against Yale on New Year’s Eve Day where he made 39 saves including a spectacular skate blade save with pads stacked on a two-on-one on the Bulldogs' Mitchell Smith. Huska career includes 69 career games, a 2.90 GAA, a career record 20-38-8 and just under 4,000 minutes played. He also had two career shutouts. A Nashville organizational source told Cantlon’s Corner that neither pair of freshmen Predators draftees, goalie Tomas Vomacka, or center Jacym Kondelik will not be offered pro contracts this spring. “While we like their progress, they have room for a lot of growth,“ remarked the source. They requested anonymity, “Vomack, we like his play very much, however, a goalie always need playing time and Kondelik has to work on his skating and has to get more physical despite being a 6’6 forward. Neither is ready for the AHL right now.” Now that they have Brian Boyle in Nashville, he's the prototype for what they want out of Kondelik. Gendron said he will take a few days to rest and talk with his agent as to what the Ottawa Senators, who drafted him, might want to do. Most likely, the Sens might sign him to an ATO with Belleville  (AHL), “I know the team is in a playoff push, and even if it's just to go to learn and practice with the team, I’m open to what they have to offer.” Since firing head coach Guy Boucher last week, they're still in organizational transition. A note for the new Governor, and his Chief of Staff... When UCONN hockey is home in their regular season and home finale, you should be there not at a Yale-RPI game. The Bulldogs are in the ECACHL playoffs that they could see next week. They should have been at the XL Center with this great crowd. Read the full article