Surge power back to finals

BILOXI , MS  – On paper, it never should have gotten to a game five. The special teams units for the Mississippi Surge, combined with one of the best goalies in the SPHL in net, should have overwhelmed the young, inconsistent Knoxville Ice Bears team lead by a first-year head coach and missing its star goal scorer.
Sunday night, it took a combination of solid goaltending and clutch scoring for the Surge to defeat the Ice Bears 3-1 in the deciding game of their best-of-five series at the Mississippi Coast Coliseum. With the win, Mississippi earned its second straight trip to the President’s Cup finals where the Augusta RiverHawks await.
From the beginning, Mississippi‘s top line of Michael Richard, Rusty Masters and Matt Zultek along with defensemen Jeff Winchester and Nick Klaren dominated the action and the scoreboard. They stepped it up when it really counted

to combine for two goals and four assists in the final win. Over the entire series, the quintet combined for seven goals and 16 assists, many of them coming on the power play.
As they had in most of the games, the Surge came out of the gates trying to overwhelm the Ice Bears with speed and shots. Ten of the game’s first 13 shots on net were directed at Knoxville goalie Bryan Hince, who entered the game with an impressive .930 save percentage despite giving up the most goals in the playoffs. Just as he had been doing, Hince stood on his to keep Mississippi off the scoreboard, making save after save. His best sequence of the period may have been the trio of saves on Chris Chambers in a span of eight seconds.
Drawing on the strength of Hince’s play, Knoxville struck first on the scoreboard. Mike Bulawka hacked the puck past goalie Bill Zaniboni in heavy action in front of the net with just one minute left in the stanza. Despite throwing 18 shots at Hince, the Surge found themselves heading into the locker room for the first intermission down by one.
After playing a very disciplined game on Saturday, the Ice Bears quickly remembered why it is imperative to stay out of the penalty box against the league’s best power play team. Early in the second period and already down one player, Knoxville‘s Martin Kubaliak earned a holding penalty, giving Mississippi a five-on-three advantage. Knoxville held on until the first penalty was killed, making it a five-on-four when Mississippi’s Jack Wolgemuth got a high-shot one-timer past Hince at the 4:39 mark of the stanza to tie the game at one.
Knoxville had a chance to take the lead back when Mississippi‘s Chris Chambers was called for high sticking Brett Valliquette, receiving a double minor and sitting for four minutes. The Ice Bears pounded Zaniboni with seven shots on goal, but none managed to make it past the net minder.   Mississippi was able to take the lead by parlaying its speed game into an odd-man rush. The Surge caught Knoxville out of position, creating a three-on-two break. Richard passed the puck to Masters who buried it behind Hince. The tally seemed to energize the Surge and they used it to retake control of momentum. Over the final ten minutes of the period, Mississippi out-shot Knoxville six to two despite having to kill off a slashing penalty assessed to Richard. When the horn sounded to end the stanza, the Surge found themselves just twenty minutes from the finals as they headed to the locker room leading 2-1.
Less than two minutes into the third, Mississippi was able to increase its lead. Richard took a pass from Klaren and rocketed the puck to the net. With Greg Moore standing in the crease screening Hince, Knoxville‘s net minder didn‘t see the shot until it was too late.
Down by two with almost 18 minutes left in regulation, the Ice Bears needed to crank up the offense. Try as they might, theywere never able to get any sustained pressure in Zaniboni as the Mississippi defense kept things to the outside and away from the net.
Knoxville ’s desperation was not helped when Dan Mercer took two minor penalties, one of which was offset by a diving call against Richard, midway through the period. A second Mississippi penalty afforded the Ice Bears a power play but that opportunity was thwarted when Knoxville’s Chris Pontes was called for hooking. The final nail came when Emery Olauson was nabbed for holding the stick with 3:11 to go, allowing the Surge to use their power play to kill off two crucial minutes of play and speeding up their second trip to the final in two year of being members of the SPHL.
Game Notes: Knoxville only had one shot on goal in the last eleven minutes of play…Mississippi’s power play went 1-for-8 in the game, finishing the series with a 10-for-36 mark…Knoxville’s man advantage units were 3-for-21 in the series after going 0-for-4 in game five…Hince stopped 46 of the 49 shots he faced in the game. Over the five games in the series, he made 212 saves to record a .932 save percentage…Zaniboni made 26 saves to earn his third win of the post-season and his 2.37 goals against average is tops among the playoff net minders.
Kristina Shands is a media consultant with the Knoxville Ice Bears and contributing writer for the blog, Chicks Who Give a Puck.
Contact the author at kristina.shands@prohockeynews.com