ESTERO, FLA – In the wake of a somewhat uncharacteristic loss on Friday, the Florida Everblades knew that they could not afford a second straight loss to the Wheeling Nailers on home ice. Failing to defend the Germain Arena would put them in a large hole heading to Wheeling for the next three games not to mention letting their faithful fans down.
Saturday night, they made sure that the fans went home happy by getting even.
Matt Willows, Jon DiSalvatore and Ryan Martindale each had a goal and an assist while goalie Anthony Peters had a bounce back game as Florida beat Wheeling 4-1 in front of an announced crowd of 3,046. Ethan Werek, who along with Mike Cornell arrived back in town earlier in the day, added two assists as the Everblades evened the best-of-seven Eastern conference quarterfinal series at one win each. The series now moves north to Wheeling for games on Wednesday, Friday and Saturday.
Giving up home ice was not what Florida wanted to do but the Nailers caught the Everblades napping the night before. Faced with a nearly must-win scenario, the pride that has been an hallmark of head coach Greg Poss’ Florida squads did not let the Everblades down.
Florida came hard at Wheeling from the opening face-off, keeping Nailers netminder Franky Palazzese on his toes. The Everblades posted the first seven shots of the game – several of them very good scoring chances – but the Nailers goalie was just as steady as he had been 24 hours earlier in game one.
Despite not seeing much action early on, Peters soon became a key figure in the contest. A little past the mid point of the opening period, he denied Cody Wydo and Kevin Schulze on back-to-back chances off an odd-man rush. Moments later, Palazzese robbed Florida’s Gabriel Desjardins on a golden opportunity.
With the game still scoreless at the start of the second period, the Everblades and Nailers began to open up their offenses. In one spectacular sequence, Palazzese turned back both Mark Nemec and Matt Marquardt at one end before Peters used his blocker glove to deny Ty Loney at the other.
A penalty to Wheeling’s Anton Zlobin 2:52 into the middle stanza gave Florida the first power play of the game and the Everblades made sure the Nailers paid the price. A little over a minute into the man advantage, Martindale was in the right place at the right time when Palazzese stopped a shot by Danny New. The rebound bounced to the goalie’s left where Martindale collected the puck and fired it into the open net for his second goal in as many nights.
The Everblades faced Wheeling’s power play shortly thereafter and made swift work of killing off the penalty. Just over thirty seconds after returning to full strength, Werek drove the puck into the Nailers defensive zone and dropped a perfect pass to Willows who snapped off a hard wrist shot that beat Palazzese to his left at the 6:49 mark.
Four minutes later the Everblades pushed the lead to three when DiSalvatore was the beneficiary of a bounce of the puck. The play started when Werek won an offensive zone face-off back to Greg Gibson. Gibson skated to the slot area where he fired a shot that pinballed off a defender to DiSalvatore who deposited the puck into the back of the net for his first goal of the series and a commanding 3-0 Florida lead.
Much like the spot that the host Everblades did on Friday, the Nailers needed something to go their way. The break came late in the period when Florida’s Chase Golightly was sent to the penalty box with a little over six minutes left before the intermission. Wheeling’s power play found a way to beat Peters when Zlobin redirected a Brett Stern shot past the Florida netminder for his first score of the series.
Try as they might, the Nailers could not get any traction with their offense early in the third thanks to Florida’s much tighter defense. Back-to-back penalties to Schulze and John McCarron gave the Everblades 1:37 of five-on-three power play time along with McCarron’s departure due to an ill-advised act that drew a game misconduct penalty under rule 75.4. Palazzese, who finished the game with 35 saves, made a number of spectacular stops to keep Wheeling within striking distance during the Everblades two-man advantage.
With Peters (20 saves) in full control, Wheeling head coach David Gove pulled Palazzese for an extra attacker with just under two minutes left in regulation. The move was foiled when defenseman Clark Seymour was called for a penalty. The Everblades capitalized on the ensuing power play when Martindale set up Marquardt for a drive from the face-off circle that lit the goal light with just over a minute left.
Tempers flared in the closing seconds when Wheeling’s Shane Bakker was hit for a major penalty for slashing and a game misconduct with seven tenths of a second to go. The Nailers’ Danny Fick and the Everblades’ New then dropped the gloves and went at it. The game officials wisely let the remaining time run off before anything else could break out.
Contact the author at Don.money@prohockeynews.com
Follow the author on Twitter @phnsingleaedit or @prohockeynews
You must be logged in to post a comment.