BRAMPTON, ONT – Shutouts are the golden ring for goaltenders. They do not come as often as desired so each one is special. Even rarer are the times when a netminder can pick up an elusive goose egg in two separate leagues in the same season.
Sunday afternoon at the Powerade Centre, Orlando Solar Bears goalie Rob Madore recorded his first ECHL shutout of the season to go along with an AHL whitewashing in a 3-0 victory over the Brampton Beast in front of an announced crowd of 3,140. It was the second time in his professional career that Madore accomplished the ECHL/AHL shutout double, the first coming during the 2012-2013 season (ECHL Florida and AHL Charlotte).
Rookie Jack Rodewald scored twice for the Solar Bears (28-23-3-5, 64 points) while linemate Brady Vail collected two assists to join Eric Faille in the 50-point club for the season. The win also gave Orlando a sweep of the three-game set against Brampton (16-32-7-4, 43 points) and moved the Solar Bears within one point of Atlanta for ninth place in the ECHL’s Eastern conference playoff race.
“I thought the guys did a good job. They filled lanes when we needed it and they took away some passes,” Madore told SB Nation’s Jonathan Species. “They made my life simple.”
Having a day off on Saturday seemed to put some jump in both teams skates as Madore and Brampton’s Jordan Ruby saw plenty of rubber in the opening period. Despite the lack of any power play opportunities, the teams combined for 18 shots on net with the Beast holding a slight advantage.
Although Orlando was outshot, it did hold the advantage on the scoreboard. The Solar Bears picked up the lone goal of the opening frame at the 13:43 mark when Rodewald took a feed from Vail in the left corner, walked to the front of the net and fired a shot between Ruby’s legs for his 15th of the year and the eventual game-winning goal.
“I thought we had a really good start. I thought it was one of those games where we could have been up five in the first period,” Solar Bears head coach Anthony Noreen told SBN’s Jonathan Species. “I thought Jordan Ruby did a tremendous job for them making some big saves in the first period.”
The goalies took center stage again in the second period. Both Madore, who finished the night with 31 saves, and Ruby had sets of spectacular saves in the middle frame. Orlando finished the stanza with 17 shots while Brampton ended up with nine but the score remained 1-0 in favor of the Solar Bears heading to the third.
The final twenty minutes began just as the second had left off except that the Beast were getting more chances on Madore than the Solar Bears were getting on Ruby (31 saves). Orlando held off a Brampton man advantage a little shy of the midpoint of the period to maintain its slim lead.
With a little under four minutes left in regulation, the visitors got an insurance score off the stick of Austin Block. It came when he cleaned up the rebound of a Rory Rawlyk shot for his 5th goal of the season. Rodewald closed off the scoring with an empty net score for his 16th of the season with 24.5 seconds left to produce the final.
Coming off a big 5-1 road trip, the Solar Bears head home for a four-game home-stand that begins with a three-game set against Adirondack which begins Thursday. Noreen told SBN that his team will need to continue to improve and bring the confidence it has shown on the road back to the Amway Center to keep hope for a playoff spot alive.
“It’s a very good Adirondack team coming in to play us. We’ve got to take a little bit of what we’ve done this season on the road and figure out how to do it at home,” Noreen said. “We’ve been a really good team and a really tough team to beat on the road [but] for whatever reason it hasn’t been the same way at home. This is as big a weekend as we’ve had. We’re going to have to be much better than we were this weekend. It means a lot so we’re going to have to have a good week of practice and get ready for Thursday.”
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.