ORLANDO, FLA – Up until this current season, the Orlando Solar Bears had never started a campaign by winning more than three consecutive games at the Amway Center. Heading into Sunday’s matchup with the Norfolk Admirals, the Solar Bears were 6-0-0-0 playing in the friendly confines of downtown O-Town.
And then it all came crashing down.
The visiting Admirals (8-6-0-1) scored two goals in each period while goalie Dylan Wells stopped 44 of 45 shots on the way to a 6-1 thrashing of the Solar Bears (9-6-1-0) in front of an announced crowd of 3,516. Six different Norfolk players scored a goal in the contest with Cody Milan, Noah Corson and Blake Murray leading the way with a score and an assist. Two of the six tallies came short-handed while a third came during an Admirals power play.
Joe Garreffa scored the lone goal for Orlando early in the first period to tie the score. It was Garreffa’s third goal in two games after his two-goal performance on Saturday.
The very first penalty of the game drew positives for both sides. Norfolk’s Corson was called for tripping at 2:02 of the opening frame and within 16 seconds, the Admirals had their first short-handed goal of the afternoon. Karl El-Mir went digging for the puck along the side boards and got it loose to Anthony Gagnon. Gagnon skated into the faceoff circle to the right of Orlando netminder Zach Emond and lasered a shot past Emond’s glove side for his third goal of the season.
Just over a minute later on the same man advantage, Garreffa took a feed from Cole Moberg and drifted into the circle to Wells’ right. Using a very large screen from Canon Pieper, Garreffa whistled one past the Norfolk netminder for his third in two games and a 1-1 tie.
The Solar Bears got themselves into penalty trouble with a little over six minutes left in the stanza when Chad Duchesne and Kevin Lohan took overlapping infractions, giving the Admirals 1:40 of five-on-three advantage time. Forty-one ticks into the two-man advantage, a cross-ice pass by Daniel Brickley hit an Orlando stick and redirected to Corson who was standing all alone at the top of Emond’s crease. He gave the puck a quick push, sending into the back of the net for his fifth goal of the season.
The second period opened with a bang when two minutes in, Orlando’s Ian Parker and Norfolk’s Anthony Collins dropped the mitts and went at it. The fight was the tail end of some rough stuff that started late in the first and culminated after the score got out of hand in the third.
At the 6:31 mark, Norfolk’s Chase Lang went to the sin bin for cross checking, putting the Solar Bears on the power play. The Admirals again worried little about the kill, turning forechecking into offense when Corson forced a turnover and fed Milan who beat Emond for his third of the season and the second shorty for Norfolk in the game.
At the point of Milan’s tally, the 3-1 lead was reminiscent of Saturday’s game when the Admirals took a 3-1 lead into the third before Orlando stormed back. The feeling went away late in the period when at the 15:01 mark, a mad scramble in front of Emond culminated with the puck going to Collins who buried it in a wide open goal for his first of the year and a 4-1 Norfolk lead.
Despite their best efforts, the Solar Bears could not find any way to beat Wells. The Admirals not only did well keeping the puck out of their net but they added two more goals of their own in the final twenty minutes. Murray picked up his second of the season when he cruised into the circle to Emond’s right and beat the goalie between his legs at 8:46 and Nick Schaus netted a power play score at 14:36 to close out the scoring.
The two teams will finish their four game set on Monday night at 7 p.m. at the Amway Center. After Monday, the teams will have two more regular season meetings remaining during the first weekend of April in Orlando.
Notes: Final shots were 45 to 28 in favor of Orlando… The Admirals went 2-for-4 on the power play while the Solar Bears were 1-for-5 with the man advantage… Orlando is now 2-2-1-0 against Norfolk so far this season… The 45 shots for the game and 21 in the first period by Orlando were both season highs.
Contact the author at don.money@prohockeynews.com
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