SC Stingrays in weekend sweep of Florida EverBlades

NORTH CHARLESTON , South Carolina-The South Carolina Stingrays skated onto the ice Friday night December 13^th at Germain Arena in Estero, Florida for a two game weekend series with the Florida EverBlades with two disadvantages.
First, they were skating with a depleted roster, a situation that only worsened before the weekend was over, and secondly the Rays lacked momentum as they have played inconsistently in their last four games. Meanwhile, returning home after a successful nine game road trip, the EverBlades were riding high by leading the American Conference South Division with a 15-3-1-1 record, good for third place overall in the ECHL. 
The Rays, while not being able to control the roster disadvantage, did recapture momentum at least for the present time. They skated off the ice with two wins, a 3-0 shutout Friday night, and perhaps more surprisingly a 7-3 win on Saturday. The wins left them two points behind the first place Everblades in the ECHL’s South Division’s standings.
Since the teams split four games in earlier this season in a home-and-home series, the South Carolina roster has been depleted by call-ups, injuries and illness. Additionally, the Stingrays have struggled of late probably due in part to all the roster disruption. Stingray fans were afraid that the inconsistent play and roster shortages would give the advantage to Florida.  
Things didn’t go as expected however, as on Friday night Stingrays’ goaltender Bobby Goepferth recorded his second shutout of the year.   In a great team effort the Stingrays scored two power play goals in periods one and three by Keith Johnson (5 goals) and Pierre-Luc O’Brien (6 goals) sandwiched around defenseman Nate Kiser’s first goal of the year in period two.
In addition to the shutout, the highlight of the game for the Ray’s may have been  Kiser’s first goal of the season. Kiser is the team enforcer and not known as a goal scorer. Kiser shot a laser beam from the point that went over the net, and was shot so hard that it bounced off the glass, caromed off the back of goaltender Anton Khudobin, and into the net.
While the momentum might have changed in Friday night’s game, the roster situation worsened for South Carolina. An injury friday night to forward Bryson Busniuk, a call up of Goepferth early Saturday morning, coupled with previous callup of goaltender Michal Neuvirth to the

Washington Capitals, left the team with just 13 skaters and one inexperienced emergency back-up goalie.
The Stingray’s, without the services of the teams two top goalies for Saturday’s game, scrambled to have someone in the net. Head Coach and General Manager Jared Bednar, got help from the Columbus Cottonmouths of the “A” level Southern Professional Hockey League (SPHL).
Ian Vigier, who is in his second season Columbus, joined the Ray’s Saturday and got the win in his first ECHL start.   Vigier, voted to the SPHL’s All Rookie Team last year, provided solid work in net against what was until this weekend, the highest scoring team in the ECHL.
Vigier was especially good in the first period which is impressive given that he nervous at the start of the game. Vigier stopped 15 period shots in the period, and stopped 33 of 36 shots on the evening.   Bednar’s pregame discussion with Vigier was along the lines of keeping it simple and to be willing to stop play frequently to avoid rebounds. If the object was to slow the Everblades high scoring offense down, it worked.
Meanwhile, Travis Morin who led South Carolina in scoring last season, was having a career night with four goals and an assist.   Morin doubled his goal total to eight in one evening.   Pierre-Luc-O’Brien (7 goals), Matt Scherer (4 goals) and Paul Kelly (4g oals) had the other goals in a big offensive show.  
All of the Stingray’s dug down deeply. Rather than simply taking the two points on Friday night as a moral victory and conceding Saturday game, the team rallied behind the rookie goaltender. Ernie Hartlieb led the Everblades with two goals (his ninth and tenth of the year) while Kevin Baker scored his 17^th goal of the season.
Everblades Head Coach Malcolm Cameron was not pleased with his team’s performance. Than again, neither were the more than 13,000 fans who attended the weekend series. After closing the locker room to the media “to review game film” Cameron described in the Sunday edition of the Naples Daily News as simply incensed. His quote in the Daily News was “To get beat is one thing, to get beat by an SPHL goalie and 13 skaters is another.”
The weekend effort should be viewed as a real achievement for South Carolina in light of the absence of so many players. Since the four game set in November, the Stingrays current active roster this weekend was missing forward Michael Dubuc the team leader in goals. Meanwhile, forward Jeff Corey is out due to illness and forwards Maxime Lacroix and Steve Pinizzotto are still in Hershey (AHL).
The defensive corps has also been reduced with the call-ups of Josh Godfrey, Sasha Pokulok, and Viktor Dovgan. Additionally there has been other back and forth roster moves such as defenseman Johan Kroll who rejoined the Stingrays from Hershey just in time to play against Florida. The roster depletion looked to have come at the worst time in Florida, one of the elite teams in the ECHL. They did however what teams with character do, the won both games despite the odds.    
Contact the author at Phil.Brand@prohockeynews.com