Everblades dispatch Solar Bears, head to conference final

ORLANDO, FLA – Pick any team sport and on any given night, one play or a series of plays can be identified as the ones that define a win or a loss. When those plays happen at full speed, even the slightest of miscalucations can be the difference in the final outcome.

Orlando Solar Bears forward Hunter Fejes (white) watches Florida goalie Martin Ouellette deny his tip attempt during Sunday’s second period (Photo courtesy of Fernando Medina / Orlando Solar Bears)

Many of those such plays happen late in the contest. Sunday afternoon at the Amway Center in Orlando, it was a play early in the game – and one late on Friday night – that may have doomed the Orlando Solar Bears to an off-season of what-ifs.

Led by Mitchell Heard, Steven Lorentz and Michael Kirkpatrick who each tallied a goal and an assist, the Florida Everblades downed Orlando 5-2 to capture the ECHL South division crown in front of an announced crowd of 5,628 by a series final of four games to one. Everblades goalie Martin Ouellette stopped 40 of 42 Solar Bears shots to keep his perfect post-season record in 2018 and carry his team into the Eastern Conference finals starting Friday in Estero.

“We knew there was a lot riding on this game and we wanted to play our best hockey and respond the right way to the loss on Friday,” Florida head coach Brad Ralph said about his team’s series-clinching victory. “Our guys came out hard.”

With both teams missing a player – Brett Bulmer for Florida and Sean Zimmerman for Orlando – due to suspensions handed down after Friday’s wild ending, nobody could have known that one play less than six minutes into Sunday’s contest would change the trajectory of the game.

The play in question came at the 5:54 mark of the opening frame when Everblades defenseman Gus Young headed in towards the back boards behind his net with Solar Bears rookie forward Martins Dzierkals hot on his heels. Dzierkals slammed Young into the boards, leaving the fourth-year blueliner flat on the ice.

The game referees, Tyler Puddifant and Stephen Thompson, had made a boarding call on Dzierkals but after a meeting between the pair and checking and finding that Young was cut from the collision with the glass, turned the call into a five-minute major and a game misconduct.

“It was huge. You lose one of your best offensive players and you’re short for five minutes,” Berehowsky said. “It was huge for us tonight.”

How huge the call was became quickly apparent. Just over a minute into the man advantage, Lorentz fed the puck to the faceoff circle to the left of Solar Bears goalie Mackenzie Skapski where Heard hammered a one-time shot home for his fourth goal of the 2018 ECHL playoffs. Thirty-one seconds later, Spencer Smallman somehow found the puck in the middle of a scramble and jammed the disc past Skapski for his second of the post-season and just like that the Everblades had a 2-0 lead.

It was certainly not the start the Solar Bears wanted but the players and coaching staff tried to stay positive.

“Obviously you don’t like to see that as a player being down like that but everyone was positive,” Solar Bears forward Chris LeBlanc said. “It happens so you just kind of go on with the game. Plays like that happen – it’s a hockey game – so we tried to just stay positive and take it one shift at a time.”

Orlando goalie Cal Heeter (center) fights off a shot as Florida’s Steven Lorentz looks for a rebound while Solar Bears defenseman Alex Gudbranson follows the puck (Photo courtesy of Fernando Medina / Orlando Solar Bears)

Asked about how much impact that series of events had on the outcome, Ralph notated the importance of scoring first as well as the circumstances surrounding the major penalty.

“You want to score the first goal in any important game and we did that,” Ralph said. “It was a hit from behind and our guy was cut and bleeding and we capitalized.”

The Everblades continued to capitalize on the Solar Bears failure to clear rebounds at the 16:02 mark of the first. This time it was Kirkpatrick getting his stick on the rebound of a shot by Sam Warning and backhanding it in for his seventh and a commanding 3-0 lead. It also marked the end of Skapski’s night as Cal Heeter came on in relief, just as Skapski had done for him on Thursday.

The hole for the Solar Bears got a little deeper early in the second. Just 1:48 into the middle frame, an Orlando defensive zone turnover put the puck on the stick of Justin Kea. In the blink of an eye, Kea sent it to Lorentz who fired it low to Heeter’s glove side. Lorentz’ second of the playoffs put the lead at 4-0.

To Orlando’s credit, the team did not throw in the towel. The Solar Bears began to fight back and got on the scoreboard at the 6:57 mark when LeBlanc banked the puck off the skate of Everblades defenseman Keegan Kanzig and in for his third of the post-season.

Before the stanza ended, LeBlanc was back on the board with a power play tally. The key play was made by Hunter Fejes, who took the puck below the goal line and threaded a feed to the slot where LeBlanc was waiting. The Winthrop, MA native zipped it into the twine for his second of the game, cutting the deficit to 4-2.

“I’m proud of the guys the way they battled back,” Berehowsky said. “They never gave up.”

Solar Bears forward Kyle Rankin (19, white) tries to turn the corner of the Florida net with Steven Lorentz in hot pursuit (Photo courtesy of Fernando Medina / Orlando Solar Bears)

The Solar Bears came close to pulling within one early in the third when Tayler Thompson fired a shot that got past Ouellette. Unfortunately for Orlando, the puck cracked off the crossbar and went back out. Moments later, Max Novak had a chance to get his team’s third score but Ouettelle, who represented the Everblades at the 2018 ECHL All-Star Game, flashed his glove hand and snared the puck before it could get past him.

Heeter, who finished the game with 22 saves in relief, kept the Solar Bears in the contest when he robbed Kea with a sprawling blocker save midway through the final twenty minutes. The problem was that his counterpart was in no mood to allow the home team to get any closer. Ouellette made 19 saves in the third, four more than he did in the second, as Orlando continued to apply intense pressure.

Berehowsky pulled Heeter for an extra attacker with 3:48 remaining, trying to find the two tallies that would keep the season going. Instead the Everblades put the game out of reach when John McCarron scored an empty net goal for his fifth of the playoffs with 1:42 remaining to punch Florida’s ticket to the conference finals.

LeBlanc admitted that the Solar Bears did not do themselves any favors by getting down early.

“We dug ourselves a little hole and the mindset was kind of just take it one shift at a time, one goal at a time,” LeBlanc said. “Unfortunately it was a little too much that we got down [by] early and we couldn’t claw back.”

Asked what he would like to tell the Solar Bears fans, Berehowsky thanked them and added that he is already looking to improve on this year’s performance starting in October.

“I’dlike to thank the fans. They’ve been awesome. All year they supported us. It’s been an up and down year but in the end we finished in a good spot. We made it throught the first round and hopefully we’ll keep building towards getting a better and better team andmaking it further in the playoffs,” Berehowsky said. “We’re going to start building [for next year] right away. We’ve got a couple of pieces already. I think some of the young kids played really well. We’re still going to get a fast team that can be physical and score some goals.”

In victory, Florida’s Ralph gave Orlando a lot of credit for making the game tougher than it might have been – which could help the Everblades as they continue post-season play.

“You have to give Orlando credit. There was no quit in them tonight. They got a little bit of momentum going I thought at the end of the first period there and they really carried it through. They played us hard,” Ralph said. “Our guys hung on and it’s great to have that experience in an intense, kind of nerve-racking game to know that you can close it out and not give up the lead.”

Notes: For the first time in the series, Orlando outshot Florida by a count of 42-38. The 42 shots is a new post-season record for Orlando, eclipsing the previous high of 40 set against Cincinnati on April 29, 2014… The Solar Bears finished the contest 1-for-3 on the power play while the Everblades went 2-for-3… Orlando’s Fejes collected two assists to close the playoffs as the team leader in points with three goals and six assists for 9 points… LeBlanc had four points in the post-season, all of them being goals… The three wins at home by the Solar Bears also established a new ECHL franchise best.