ESTERO, FL – The Florida Everblades used four different goals scorers to defeat the Allen Americans 4-1 at Germain Arena Saturday night. The Everblades now extend their unbeaten streak to five games, and continue to the hold first place in the ECHL with 73 points.
After a back-and-forth physical first period, the Everblades were able to jump on the board off a shot from Mitchell Heard with 48 seconds remaining in the period. Joe Cox sent Heard a tape-to-tape pass that he wound up and fired past the blocker side of Stephon Williams from the left wing circle.
Joe Cox extended the Everblades lead at the 12:44 of the second period with his 16th goal of the season after receiving a home run pass from Stephen MacAulay. Cox streaked in all alone on the Allen net, deked forehand-backhand and finished and with a variation of the Tampa Bay Lightning’s Nikita Kucherov’s move where he faked the deke and let the puck slide right through the five-hole for the goal.
The Americans answered back quickly while on the power play with a goal on a one-timer from Joel Chouinard at 13:19 that broke Martin Ouellette’s shutout streak that extended into last night’s game at 93:19, bringing the Americans back within one. Despite the goal from Allen, the Everblades entered the second intermission nursing a 2-1 lead.
The Everblades added another to their lead courtesy of Matt Berry just 1:38 into the third period as he received a pass from Zack Kamrass in the slot and whipped a shot past Williams to make it a 3-1 game early.
The Americans decided to pull Williams due to an equipment issue with about seven minutes left in the game and replace him with Jeremy Brodeur. Just moments later, Justin Kea beat him on the blocker side after getting a pass on a 2-on-1 break with Matt Berry to put the score at 4-1.
The ‘Blades will now tackle a three-game road trip that opens up Friday night at Tulsa. Game time is set for 8:05 p.m. eastern time.
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