JACKSONVILLE, FLA – Through six games of fourteen scheduled mettings between the Orlando Solar Bears and the Jacksonville Icemen, both teams had won three games. It came as no surprise that the Solar Bears had won the three meetings at the Amway Center. What was a bit surprising was the point that Orlando had gone 0-3 so far at the Vystar Veterans Memorial Arena.
PHN photo by Trina Kirk
Wednesday night, thanks to a career night by a Tampa Bay Lightning assigned player and a reawakening of the power play, the Solar Bears finally put up a win in the River City.
Tye Felhaber netted his first professional multi-goal game with a pair of tallies and added an assist while the power play units clicked off two goals to break a six-game drought as Orlando (23-16-3-0) came away with a 5-2 victory over the host Icemen (24-14-2-1) in front of an announced crowd of 4,973. Goalie Brad Barone, playing in his seventh consecutive game, turned aside 26 Icemen shots to pick up his 16th win of the season.
Odeen Tufto and Michael Brodzinski each contributed a goal and an assist to the cause while Andrew McLean and Tristin Langan each added two assists. Tufto’s tally and Felhaber’s second score both came on the man advantage, giving Orlando a very efficient 2-for-3 success rate in the contest.
Things could have started off a lot worse than they did for the Solar Bears. Right out of the gates in the first period, penalties to Tyler Bird and Dylan Fitze put the visitors down two men but Orlando’s penalty killers erased the disadvantage with ease, allowing no shots during the five-on-three and just one during the remaining time on Fitze’s infraction.
Orlando got two power plays of its own late in the period, the second a call on Jacksonville’s Croix Evingson just as Ben Howerchuk was leaving the penalty box. It took almost all of the second two minutes for the Solar Bears to break the ice when McLean set up Tufto for a shot that beat Icemen goalie Charles Williams to the glove side for his third of the season. Langan picked up the secondary assist on Tufto’s tally that gave the visitors a 1-0 lead after one frame.
The visitors broke the game open within the first 5:19 of the second stanza with a pair of scores. At the 2:23 mark, McLean sent a stretch pass into the neutral zone to send Felhaber away on an odd-man rush into the Jacksonville defensive zone. As the lone defender backed in, Felhaber made a beeline to the far side faceoff circle before sizzling a shot between Williams’ blocker arm and body for his third goal in his last three games.
Three minutes later, the Solar Bears struck again. Langan and Felhaber did the dirty work digging the puck along the side boards before Felhaber sent it back to Joe Garreffa at the point. Garreffa, who split his time between forward and defense due to the absence of both Dmitry Semykin and Steve Oleksy from the lineup, had enough room to drive into the near side circle and wire the puck into the top corner of the cage past a screened Williams for his eighth goal of the year and a 3-0 Orlando lead.
The Solar Bears did not want to leave anything to chance and later in the frame came up with another goal. Orlando’s second man up score came at the 13:49 mark when Felhaber picked up the rebound of a shot by Tufto that was blocked and put it into the back of the net for his second of the night and fourth of the season to extend the margin to 4-0.
The third period started much like the first did. The Solar Bears found themselves in a penalty hole quickly as McLean and Langan were sitting together in the sin bin at the 3:25 mark to give Jacksonville its second five-on-three advantage. This time around, the Icemen took advantage when Ara Nazarian fed a pass from under the goal line to Abbott Girduckis who was along the side boards. As the Orlando defenders collapsed toward the net, Girduckis came off the boards and from the faceoff circle fired a shot that beat Barone to break up the shutout bid. For Girduckis it was his tenth goal of the season.
It stayed a 4-1 game until after the midpoint of the frame when Brodzinski made about as pretty a play by a defenseman that a coach could get. Under pressure from Orlando’s forecheck, the Icemen tried to clear the puck around the boards. Brodzinski kept it in the zone and danced around a hard charging opponent. The move gave Brodzinski a lane to the far faceoff circle from which he drilled a shot past Williams for his seventh of the year as well as his fourth unassisted tally.
Jacksonville finished out the scoring with 1:30 remaining when during yet another two-man advantage, Nazarian batted a puck that had gone aerial over Barone’s shoulder for his seventh of the season. It was not near enough to catch the Solar Bears however as Orlando skated off with the win.
The Solar Bears are now off until Saturday when the Florida Everblades return to Central Florida for a pair of games.
Notes: Final shots were 28-26 in favor of Jacksonville… The Icemen finished the night 2-for-7 on the power play… Barone’s 16th win put him in a tie with Atlanta’s Tyler Parks and Tulsa’s Daniel Mannella for the league lead in victories… Brodzinski’s two points boosted his career total to 99 as a member of the Solar Bears… Langan’s two helpers moved him into a tie with Eric Baier for third most by an Orlando player in their Solar Bears career.
Contact the author at don.money@prohockeynews.com
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