ORLANDO, FLA – Over the course of a long schedule, hockey players are expected to keep motivating themselves to play hard. On some occasions, the coaching staff may need to “peel some paint off the walls” in order to light a fire. Then there are those nights when nothing works.
Orlando head coach Anthony Noreen was not happy with his team’s play Monday night (File photo courtesy of F. Medina & G. Bassing/Orlando Solar Bears)
Monday night at the Amway Center, head coach Anthony Noreen and his Orlando Solar Bears had a night that will get watched in video study before the DVD is taken out and burned to a crisp.
Playing a seemingly uninspired game, the Solar Bears (8-6-1-3, 20 points) fell to the South Carolina Stingrays by a final score of 3-0 in front of an announced crowd of 4,244. It was Orlando’s second straight loss in regulation to the Stingrays and ran the team’s current winless streak (including two shootout losses) to five games.
David Pacan, who netted a hat trick against the Solar Bears a week ago, scored a pair of first period short-handed goals, to lead the visiting Stingrays. Pacan’s effort helped goalie Mark Dekanich pick up his fourth win of the season and second shutout.
What was more concerning than the loss to a very good South Carolina (11-6-1-1, 24 points) squad was the way in which it occurred. The effort seemed to be passionless, a point that did not sit well with the rookie head coach.
“I thought we looked like a team that hasn’t practiced in two weeks. It (team) is not mature enough to take what’s shown on video and taught on video and put it into place on the ice. I thought we looked like a team who – I don’t know maybe I’m a different breed – but when you show up to the rink and you are uninspired and you’re not excited to jump over the boards, you don’t make your teammates better, you don’t have energy, you don’t do something every time you’re on the ice. Maybe times have changed but I just don’t understand it,” Noreen said. “To me it’s extremely frustrating that as a coach my number one thing I had to do between periods is go in and motivate and scream and yell. To me if you’re this age and you need a guy to scream and yell at you to get you going, it’s a shame. There needs to be some growing up in that room for sure. That type of hockey is just 100 percent unacceptable.”
Noreen’s words, by far the harshest he has spoken this season in regards to his Solar Bears team, seemed to pinpoint the way the contest played out. In losing for the fourth time in five meetings with the Stingrays (one in a shootout), Orlando finished the first quarter of the season with fans and other observers wondering where the team that scored 18 goals in its first three games had gone.
Pacan’s first goal came 11:05 into the opening frame. With time winding down on a penalty kill, defenseman Wade Epp lofted a pass to the neutral zone. Andrew Rowe collected the puck and created an odd-man rush with Pacan. Rowe drew the Orlando defender and goalie Rob Madore to him before sliding the puck to Pacan who fired it into the wide open net. The score was Pacan’s fourth of the season, all of them against the Solar Bears.
Pacan came back for more late in the period. This time he did all the work, making a steal and breaking in all alone on Madore. Pacan patiently waited until the right moment when he lasered a shot to the top corner of the net for his second shorty of the stanza and fifth of the year.
Playing with house money, South Carolina’s defensive plan kicked into high gear in the second. The Stingrays ramped up the pressure from end to end, causing the Solar Bears to flounder mightily. Even Orlando’s power play, which entered the game with the ECHL’s best success rate at 24.2 percent, seemed helpless against the veteran wiles that South Carolina threw at it. It did not help when the Solar Bears had to kill a double minor late in the frame but Madore and the penalty killers dug in and kept the Stingrays from getting even one shot on net during the four minutes.
Any hopes the home fans had for a rousing comeback were dashed a little over four minutes into the final period. That was when Brett Cameron redirected a point shot from Bobby Shea past Madore (24 saves) for his sixth of the season and an insurmountable three goal lead.
All that was left was to see if Dekanich could keep the Solar Bears off the scoreboard. Orlando created eleven shots on the South Carolina netminder in the final twenty minutes but none found the back of the net.
Noreen, who came from the world of junior hockey to the pros, squarely put the onus on the players to find the right level of self-motivation prior to the team’s next game, a home contest against the Atlanta Gladiators on Saturday.
“To me, motivation’s not from me or from anyone [else]. Motivation is here (heart). If you don’t have it here, I feel bad for you because you better find it,” he said. “This is the wrong sport for you if it’s not coming from within. To me you could do that a couple times a year, what I had to do after the first period (yell and scream). After that it goes on deaf ears. I’m not going to go in and yell and scream every day. It’s grow up [and] be a man. If you love the game, play the game the way you love the game. If not, find something else to do.”
Contact the author at don.money@prohockeynews.com
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