ORLANDO, FLA – Orlando Solar Bears head coach Drake Berehowsky looked at the two meetings between his squad and the two-time defending ECHL Kelly Cup champion Allen Americans as the latest way to judge how well his team is playing. Even though Sunday afternoon’s result was not necessarily what he wanted, Berehowsky was able to find some good in it.
Allen’s Jake Marchment (left) and Orlando goalie Ryan Massa track the puck during Sunday’s game (Photo courtesy of Orlando Solar Bears)
Led by a goal and three assists from Bryan Moore, the visiting Americans (27-15-2-2, 58 points) came away with a come-from-behind 5-4 victory in overtime over the Solar Bears (21-15-5-2, 49 points) in front of an announced crowd of 6,747 at the Amway Center. Chris Crane led the Orlando attack with a pair of goals and an assist.
Despite the loss, the Solar Bears came away with three of a possible four points against one of the best teams in the league. Just the fact that Orlando was in a position to sweep the two-game set proved to Berehowsky that his squad can hang with anyone in the ECHL.
“I thought we came out and we played well. They have a good team, they battled back and it was a back-and-forth game,” Berehowsky said. “We got a point [out of it]. The guys worked hard. Like I said we battled against a top place team and I’m proud of the guys the way they came out and played this weekend.”
Berehowsky and most of the Sunday afternoon crowd had to be extremely happy with the way the Solar Bears started out. Bringing a let’s hit them hard and fast attitude out of the locker room, Orlando hit the ice flying from the opening face-off. It took only a minute and twenty seconds for the Solar Bears to opening the scoring when Crane sent defenseman Ben Danford away on an odd-man rush up ice. Using a teammate as a decoy, Danford zipped to the top of the face-off circle to the right of Allen goalie Jamie Murray and rifled a wrist shot that went between Murray’s legs for Danford’s fourth goal of the season.
“I was kind of sitting there in the middle of the slot in the defensive zone. We got a turnover and Craner saw me. I started to take off out of the zone [and] he hit me with a great pass,” Danford said about the score. “[We had a] two-on-one and I was just really looking [to hit the goalie’s] far pad and it ended up going in.”
Two and a half minutes later, Crane and his linemates – Mason Marchment and Darik Angeli – were back on the ice and again it led to a goal. This time it was Angeli with the key play, making a pass from the half boards to Murray’s left to Crane who ripped a shot to the far corner for his tenth goal of the season and seventh since joining the Solar Bears in late November from Allen.
It took the Americans eleven minutes to get on the scoreboard. It came when Moore collected the puck below the goal line and mad an aggressive move toward the crease of Orlando netminder Ryan Massa. Massa made the initial save but Moore stayed with the rebound and was able to slide it under the goalie for his 18th goal of the year.
The teams pushed back and forth for most of the rest of the first period until the final minute when Allen evened the score. With 51.5 seconds to go before the intermission, Jake Marchment – the cousin of Orlando’s Mason – knocked the puck from behind the net toward the crease. The disc found the stick of Dyson Stevenson who was able to somehow flip it up and over Massa for his seventh marker of the season.
There was still time on the clock and the Solar Bears made the best use of it. With 23.3 ticks left, Angeli went down low to battle for the puck with an Allen defender. The puck squirted out to the left circle where Crane was in the right place at the right time to send it past Murray for his second score of the period to put Orlando up 3-2 after one.
“Our line started off hot and we just wanted to keep it simple and I got a couple of lucky bounces, ” Crane said about his big opening frame.
Allen head coach replaced Murray with Peter DiSalvo to start the middle frame, hoping to get a spark out of the move. It certainly paid dividends when DiSalvo made a key save on Orlando’s Shane Conacher about eight minutes into the period – just one of 13 saves that the replacement netminder made in the stanza.
The Solar Bears scored the only goal of the period during a four minute power play when Allen’s Tanner Eberle was called for high sticking Orlando’s Daniel Maggio and drawing blood. During the first of the double minor penalties, Conacher laid a perfect cross-ice pass from the right face-off circle back to the left point where Brenden Miller lined up a one-time blast. Miller’s shot was true, finding the back of the net for the defenseman’s seventh goal of the season.The tally gave the Solar Bears a 4-2 lead that they took to the second intermission.
Down by two heading into the third, the Americans unleashed an all-out assault on Massa and the Orlando defense. It took just 2:02 for the visitors to draw within 4-3 when Chad Costello slid a pass across the crease to the back side post where Josh Brittain banged it home for his fourth goal of the year. Three minutes and change later right after a failed Americans power play, David Makowski was left open in the slot for a pass from Moore and a shot that whistled past Massa for his fifth goal and a tie game.
Allen continued to push for a go-ahead tally but Massa held the fort as he faced a total of 21 shots in the period. DiSalvo was not as busy, looking at and stopping all four Solar Bears opportunities.
Orlando had a golden opportunity to end the game early in overtime when Allen’s Joel Chouinard went to the penalty box. The Solar Bears man advantage units failed to find the game-winning score and it came back to haunt them.
In the dying moments of the extra period, Moore sailed a pass back to the blue line to teammate Eric Roy. Roy glided along the line to the middle of the ice and using a screen in front, blew a shot past Massa with 35 left to give the visitors the win.
Crane, the former American sniper, echoed his coach’s sentiments about picking up three points in the two games while matching up well with the defending champs.
“We got three out of four points on the weekend. That’s a good hockey club over there. I mean they’ve won the Kelly Cup the last two years so it was a good test for us,” Crane said. “I thought we played five out of six good periods. We didn’t play well in the last (third) period there but we can learn from it.”
Notes: Massa finished with 37 saves in the contest… Orlando held Allen scoreless in five power play chances while the Solar Bears went 1-for-7… Orlando had been 13-0 when leading after two periods this season prior to Sunday’s loss… The Solar Bears loss was compounded when defenseman Nikolas Brouillard was injured late in the overtime. Brouillard was taken off the ice on a stretcher in obvious pain. Berehowsky had no information on Brouillard’s condition during the post-game press conference… Orlando is off until Thursday when Greenville pays a visit to the City Beautiful.
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