ORLANDO, FLA – With just under twelve minutes left in the third period on Sunday, the Orlando Solar Bears found themselves down by three goals to the visiting Atlanta Gladiators. The young players on the Solar Bears roster had two choices: hang their heads and accept defeat or keep battling and attempt to make a stirring comeback.
Orlando’s Jack Rodewald (black jersey) had two assists in the Solar Bears loss on Sunday (Photo courtesy of F. Medina & G. Bassing/Orlando Solar Bears)
They chose the latter and the Gladiators barely survived what could have been an agonizing loss.
Led by Thomas Frazee who scored two third-period goals, the Gladiators (11-8-1-0, 23 points) hung on for dear life to grab a 4-3 win over the host Solar Bears in front of a crowd of 5,064 at the Amway Center. Although Orlando (9-7-1-3, 22 points) suffered its third loss in its last four outings, the way the team rallied to almost send the game to overtime was the biggest takeaway from what could have been a morale-busting defeat.
“We’re not going to quit. I knew we’d fight to get back in it. You felt like it was one of those [games] where both teams were getting their chances and finally pucks started going in the net one way [and] you feel like you’re going to get a couple at the other [end],” Orlando head coach Anthony Noreen said. “It stayed 4-1 for a while and we probably had seven or eight grade-A chances that didn’t go in the net. You finally get one and you get the next one and the puck is on our stick in some pretty good areas right down to the very end. We had our chances. Hat’s off to their goaltender. He had a heck of a night.”
That goaltender, former Solar Bear Kent Patterson, held on just long enough to see Orlando run out of time after Matt and Ryan Rupert each scored a power play goal to lead the charge. Jack Rodewald assisted on both man advantage tallies in the furious back half of the final frame.
“It’s always tough playing from behind, especially since we wanted all four points this weekend. It’s too bad we didn’t get them,” Rodewald said. “I thought overall it was a good weekend and obviously the [level] of urgency, you could kind of feel it go up a bit. We had a lot more grade-A opportunities to score in the last ten minutes but we just couldn’t capitalize on a few of them.”
With the start time of the contest coming less than 18 hours after the end of Saturday night’s meeting, it took both sides a bit to get untracked. Aided by three first period power play opportunities, the Gladiators controlled a good portion of the frame, keeping Orlando goalie Ryan Massa on his toes.
On the second Atlanta man advantage, the Solar Bears opportunistic penalty killers turned defense into offense. Eric Faille led a rush up the ice into the Gladiators defensive zone, drawing a couple of defenders in his direction. He fed the puck into the high slot area where and unguarded Brady Vail took it and unleashed a wicked wrist shot that zipped passed Patterson low to the stick side and into the net. It was Orlando’s league-leading seventh short-handed goal of the season and Vail’s second PK tally.
Power play number three for the Gladiators came late in the period when Matt Rupert was called for interference. Twenty-two seconds into the man advantage, Max Everson drove a shot from the point that hit a stick and flipped up and over Massa into the net for Everson’s fifth of the season and a 1-1 tie.
Orlando’s Jack Rodewald (black, right) battles Atlanta’s Zach Sarig for position (Photo courtesy of F. Medina & G. Bassing/Orlando Solar Bears)
The teams battled through a scoreless second period that was highlighted by a heavyweight battle between Atlanta’s Brad Navin and Orlando’s Brad Richard. The best opportunity for either team to take the lead came when overlapping penalties to the Gladiators gave the Solar Bears 33 seconds of five-on-three power play time but Patterson and the Atlanta penalty killers held the home team at bay.
Things began to unravel for Orlando early in the third. Matt Register, playing in his second game with the Gladiators, fed the puck to Frazee in the faceoff circle to Massa’s left. Using a little bit of a screen in front of the net, Frazee’s shot beat Massa upstairs for his fourth of the year and a lead that Atlanta would not relinquish.
Three minutes after a fight between Ryan Rupert and Tyler Murovich (another former Solar Bear), Frazee collected the rebound of a Derek Nesbitt redirect and tucked it behind Massa (32 saves) for his second straight tally and a two-goal cushion. Twenty-seven second later, another loose rebound ended up on the stick of Daniel Bahntge who put a backhander into the net to make it 4-1 in favor of the Gladiators.
Bahntge’s third goal of the season was the wake-up call the Solar Bears needed. With Orlando on a power play thanks to a too many men on the ice call, Matt Rupert pulled the puck out of a scramble in front and popped it past Patterson for his fifth goal of the season. Then at the 16:20 mark of the period, Ryan Rupert took a feed from Richard and one-timed a blast into the net for his third goal in two games, cutting the margin to one.
Try as they might, the Solar Bears were unable to find the equalizer in the waning minutes of the period. Patterson, who finished with 30 saves, and his teammates did everything they could to withstand the constant pressure applied by Orlando. Somehow the Gladiators allowed just one shot to reach Patterson over the last 3:40 to collect the two points and head home with a split of the weekend set.
The Solar Bears will embark on a six-game road trip that will take them into the Christmas break. Noreen said that he is looking forward to seeing how the team responds to the challenge.
“We felt like we grew over this past week and this weekend at home,” he said. “It’ll be good to get out on the road and just be us – no distractions or anything like that. Obviously they’re divisional games so we know how important they are. I look forward to us going into the break on a good note.”
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