CINCINNATI, OH – Coming off a game where the offense scored just once on 51 shots, the Orlando Solar Bears were hoping to be just a bit more efficient when they dropped in at the US Bank Arena to take on the Cincinnati Cyclones on Tuesday night.
As it turned out, they were even better than even they had wanted to be.
Jean Dupuy recorded a goal and an assist while Martins Dzierkals posted three assists to lead the visiting Solar Bears (9-10-3-0, 21 points) to a solid 5-2 win over the Cyclones (12-7-1-0, 25 points). Seven other Orlando players notched a point in the contest and goalie Cal Heeter made 23 saves to collect his sixth straight winning result.
Heeter once again was key to a good night for the Solar Bears as he posted a perfect first period, turning away all ten Cincinnati shots that came his way. The netminder’s work allowed his teammates to find their way at the offensive end. Orlando needed that time as after putting up three shots in the first five minutes of the opening frame, the Cyclones did not allow a recorded shot by the visitors until near the end of the stanza.
The Solar Bears finished the period with just five shots on net but they made the last one count. With time ticking down, captain Sean Zimmerman took a feed from Dupuy and sent the puck toward the slot. It was a perfect play as Chris LeBlanc was there to take the pass and whip it past Cyclones goalie Jonas Johansson just inside the right post for his fourth goal of the season with a mere 1.7 seconds left before the intermission.
One goal on five shots is not a bad percentage – especially after Sunday’s 1-for-51 output- but things got even better in the middle frame. At the 2:50 mark of the period, Max Novak stole the puck in the Cincinnati defensive end and made a beeline for the net. Once he got close enough, Novak ripped a shot high over Johansson’s blocker glove for his team-leading eighth of the year. That brought the shooting percentage to two goals on six shots.
Heeter was still solid as a rock at the other end of the ice, holding the Cyclones at bay. Even having collisions with two different Cincinnati players (one was called for goalie interference, the other was ruled incidental contact) did nothing to knock the Solar Bears netminder off his game.
A little past the midpoint of the period, Orlando increased its lead to three. At the 11:17 mark, a delayed penalty on the Cyclones allowed the Solar Bears to pull Heeter for an extra attacker. The visitors kept control of the puck and eventually it ended up on the stick of Kristian Pospisil who slid it between Johansson’s legs for his fifth tally of the season. Dzierkals and Darryl Bootland picked up the assists on the score.
With less than two minutes to go before the second intermission, the Solar Bears struck one more time. Dzierkals made the key play, sending the puck toward the Cincinnati net just as Tayler Thompson drove toward the crease. The puck and Thompson both arrived at the right time, allowing Thompson to redirect it into the back of the net for his first goal of the season and a 4-0 Orlando lead. When the buzzer sounded to end the period, the visitors had three goals on nine shots in the stanza and a pretty healthy four goals on 14 shots through two.
The Cyclones were not about to quit and hit back early in the third. Just 51 seconds in, Rob DeFulviis redirected a shot by Brandon McNally past Heeter to bust up the shoutout with his sixth goal of the season. That score was followed at the 3:19 mark when a two-on-one mini-break allowed Justin Danforth to set up Jesse Schultz for his seventh of the year on a power play to pull the hosts within 4-2.
Orlando’s offense, which had that gawdy goals-to-shots percentage, struggled  to get untracked in the early part of the final twenty minutes. It took the better part of almost nine minutes for the Solar Bears to record a shot.
All that worry went away when a power play at the 9:37 mark gave the visitors a chance to put the momentum in their corner. The plan came to fruition when Dupuy wasin the right place to deflect a shot by J.C. Campagna past Jason Kasdorf, who had replaces Johansson at the start of the period, for his sixth of the year and the Solar Bears lone man advantage tally of the night.
The closest the Cyclones got to scoring after that point was a drive by Danforth that beat Heeter but clanged off the post and caromed away. It was the only thing that got past the Orlando netminder after the early scores in the period as the Solar Bears easily pickedup the win.
Notes: Final shots for the game favored Cincinnati 25-24… Each team collected one power play goal as Orlando went 1-for-3 while the Cyclones were 1-for-6… With his three assists, Dzierkals now has a four game point streak going (2 goals, 5 assists) in the month of December… Novak extended his consecutive gameswith a point streak to three contests (2 goals, 1 assist) dating back to last Saturday against South Carolina… The game was the 899th professional contest for Bootland. He collected an assist for the second straight game… Zimmerman’s assist on LeBlanc’s tally was his first point as a member of the Solar Bears… The last time the Solar Bears and Cyclones met was on November 21, 2015, a game won by Cincinnati 4-3 in a shootout at U.S. Bank Arena… The two teams will complete their two-game set Thursday night at U.S. Bank Arena. Puck drop is set for 7:35 p.m.
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