Galiev, Royals trump Orlando

READING, Pa – When a team is going through a rough patch, getting to play a weaker team can be a quick cure to fix the issues. What they don’t need is to be playing a squad that is red hot and clicking on all cylinders.
The Orlando Solar Bears faced the latter Saturday night when they took on the Reading Royals at the Sovereign Center and the outcome was fairly predictable. Despite the two-goal effort of forward C.J. Severyn, the Solar Bears (10-13-2-2) lost their second consecutive game on their current road trip by a 5-3 final. The Royals (18-7-0-1) were led by a hat trick from Stanislav Galiev to their fifth consecutive win and their ninth in the last eleven games.

The first period turned out to be a shootout with the teams combining for four goals in a span of 5:12. Orlando got on the board first at the 9:03 mark when Severyn cleaned up the rebound of a Sean Lorenz shot and put it behind Reading netminder Philipp Grubauer. A little over three minutes later, Galiev took advantage of a Solar Bears penalty to take a feed from Barry Almeida on the backside and one-timed it past Orlando goalie John Curry for a power play tally.
The 4,069 had just settled back into their seats after Galiev’s teddy bear toss goal when Yannick Tifu and Joel Champagne combined to send Galiev flying back into the Orlando end where he whistled a snap shot into the back of the net. Galiev’s second tally put Reading in front for the first time but the Solar Bears answered back quickly. It happened when Mat Sisca and Dan Gendur broke into the Royals end. Gendur attempted a pass but it hit a Reading defender and eluded Grubauer to tie the score. For Gendur, it was his first goal since joining the Solar Bears last weekend.
Orlando had an opportunity to take the lead back when Almeida took a double minor late in the first, meaning that the Solar Bears would have four minutes of power play time stretching into the second period. Reading had other ideas, keeping the visitors off the board while building momentum from its penalty killing units.
That momentum turned into the tie-breaking score just past the nine minute mark of the stanza when Tifu took a breakout pass from Brett Flemming, made two quick moves and beat Curry to score his eighth goal of the season. Orlando came back seconds later – 17 to be exact – when captain Ryan Cruthers fed Severyn for a drive to the top corner of the net. It was Severyn’s seventh goal of the season and knotted the score for the third time in the contest.
The key juncture of the contest came with less than seven minutes left in the period. With Lorenz already off for tripping, Orlando’s Ryan Reaves was nabbed for cross-checking, giving the Royals 1:41 with a two-man advantage. As time wound down on the 5-on-3 power play, Galiev got loose for a shot that was partially blocked but had enough steam to get to the net. Curry made the save but the rebound came back to Galiev who scored to complete his hat trick and put Reading in front for good.
Trailing by one as the third period started, Orlando needed a kick start for its offense and seemingly got it when Reading’s Danick Paquette was handed a five-minute major and a game misconduct for boarding Lorenz. Once again the Royals penalty killers and goalie Grubauer came up huge, keeping the Solar Bears from scoring. Orlando would have one more chance on the man advantage after that but also failed on that attempt, finishing the game 0-for-4 on the power play. Reading’s Ian O’Connor scored a late empty net goal to seal the Royals’ victory.
The Solar Bears will finish the northeast part of the road trip with a Sunday afternoon game in Trenton against the Titans starting at 3:05 p.m. They will then come home for a couple of days before heading to southwest Florida for a three game set against the defending champion Everblades starting on Wednesday night.
Contact the author at don.money@prohockeynews.com
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