ORLANDO, FLA – Because of roster turnover, just about every team in the ECHL starts the new season trying to get used to new teammates in an attempt to attain the right chemistry needed to win. Some teams find that chemistry quickly while others struggle out of the gate and take longer.
Orlando’s Jean Dupuy (24) and Max Novak (20) celebrate a goal during Saturday’s second period (Photo courtesy of Fernando Medina / Orlando Solar Bears)
Then there are the Florida Everblades who just seem to work together like a well-oiled machine from the first minute of training camp.
Saturday night at the Amway Center, the visiting Everblades (8-1-0-0, 16 points) got third period goals from Gus Young and Mitchell Heard to break up a tie score and defeat the Orlando Solar Bears (2-4-1-0, 5 points) 4-2 in front of an announced crowd of 5,746. Forward Michael Kirkpatrick added three assists as Florida grabbed two more points in this year’s Wawa Sunshine Cup series.
Max Novak and Jean Dupuy picked up the two scores for the host Solar Bears, who have now yet to win in four appearances in front of their fans.
“It’s a fine line between winning and losing and right now I think our team is just a hair on the wrong side of the line,” Novak said. “We’re almost there and once we start clicking as a group, good things are going to happen.”
The bitter in-state rivalry nearly began before the game began as members of both teams gathered near the end of the pregame warmup but cooler heads prevailed. The incident set a tone as the teams came out hard and fast, testing both Orlando goalie Cal Heeter and Florida netminder Martin Ouellette in the opening minutes.
The visiting Everblades once again got a quick jump on the scoreboard but instead of a one-goal lead, Florida put up two in rapid succession. The first came at the 4:21 mark when Kyle Neuber’s pass to the front of the net found the stick of Brett Bulmer who out battled a defender and redirected it past Heeter for his first of the season.
Just one minute and 23 seconds later, Kirkpatrick sent a pass to the point where defenseman Logan Roe let go with a bomb that beat a screened Heeter to the glove side for the defender’s first of the year.
“I know one [mistake] was coverage on the one guy and I’ve got to look at the second one again,” Solar Bears head coach Drake Berehowsky said about the scores his team gave up in the opening stanza. “We were standing beside a guy [but] we just weren’t prepared under his stick.”
The score remained 2-0 in favor of Florida through the final fourteen minutes of the first frame and well into the middle stanza. Part of it was the work of the two goalies, in particular Ouellette who at times was spectacular in the first, and part of it was the defense being played by both teams. Between the squads, it took them almost half of the second period to accumulate a total of five shots on net because neither team wanted to give up the next goal.
The Solar Bears finally got on the board thanks to the speed of Novak. Taking a high lob feed from Matias Cleland, the Oak Ridge, NJ native turned on the jets through neutral ice. Once he hit the Florida defensive blue line, Novak was able to turn a defender and cut to the net, shoveling the puck with his backhand into the open net created by Ouellette trying to follow him across the crease. The score was Novak’s second of the season and the wake up call his team needed.
“It was a high chip from Cleland. I was able to kind of bat it out of the air,” Novak said. “I got a step on their defenseman and was able to kind of throw it on the net and luckily it found the net.”
On the ensuing face-off, some of that Florida-Orlando bad blood spilled over as the Everblades’ Neuber and the Solar Bears Mike Monfredo squared off in a heavyweight bout. Both players got in some big shots before the two went to the ice with Neuber on top.
Jean Dupuy (24,center) leads the Solar Bears off to celebrate with the bench after his first goal of the season (Photo courtesy of Fernando Medina / Orlando Solar Bears)
Orlando got a power play soon after but failed to convert. The advantage did however give them some momentum that paid off. Seven seconds after the power play expired, Dupuy took the puck to the Florida net and tried to get a pass to Chris Crane in front. The puck hit Crane’s skate and bounced right back in his direction. With his body below the goal line but his stick on the right side of it, Dupuy was able to pop the disc past Ouellette for his first of the year and a 2-2 tie that held into the intermission.
Getting that first score in a Solar Bears uniform was a relief to Dupuy.
“I was getting chances the first couple of games that just weren’t going in,” he said. “It’s nice to get that off the back. Hopefully I can start doing that more often.”
The Everblades took the lead for good 3:23 into the final frame. Once again it was Kirkpatrick who triggered the play with a pass to the point. Young was there to receive it and unleash a rocket toward the net. Again thanks to a screen in front, Heeter never saw the shot until it was too late, giving Young his first of the season.
Thanks to a couple of ill-timed penalties, the Solar Bears were never able to establish the offense they needed to solve Ouellette (30 saves). Florida put the result on ice when Heard redirected a feed from Steven Lorentz past the Orlando netminder for his fifth goal of the season during a man advantage.
Dupuy, one of the new faces experiencing hockey in Central Florida for the first time, said he was impressed by the support the fans have been providing through the Solar Bears early struggles.
“It’s great. The fans [have] definitely come out and showed their support,” Dupuy said. “It’s sad that we haven’t been able to give them a win at home but we really appreciate them.”
Notes: The Solar Bears wore jerseys modeled after those worn by the Orlando Magic early in the NBA franchise’s days. Former Magic player and now team ambassador Bo Outlaw dropped the ceremonial first puck… Orlando outshot Florida 32-23 in the game… The Solar Bears went 0-for-6 on the power play while the Everblades were 1-for-6… Goalie Mackenzie Skapski, who was signed on Thursday by the AHL Toronto Marlies and assigned to the Solar Bears, was Heeter’s backup. Skapski is wellknown to Orlando fans, having beaten the Solar Bears five times in seven starts for the Greenville Swamp Rabbits last season… Orlando’s next game is set for Tuesday night when the Swamp Rabbits visit the Amway Center for a 7 p.m. puck drop.
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