Orlando’s Mark Louis (25, black) played a pivotal role in Friday night’s game (Photo courtesy of F. Medina & G. Bassing/Orlando Solar Bears)
ORLANDO, FLA – With the game on the line, Orlando Solar Bears forward Rylan Schwartz could see his shot catch the edge of Manchester Monarchs goalie Colin Stevens’ catching glove and fall to the ice. It continued to slide slowly toward the goal line until it finally came to rest…with part of it still touching the line.
Such is how things go when bad luck is the only luck a team has.
Schwartz’s oh-so-close shot left the host Orlando Solar Bears (17-18-2-4, 40 points) once again on the short end, this time a 4-3 loss to the Manchester Monarchs (28-12-1-4, 61 points) Friday night at the Amway Center in front of an announced crowd of 8,056. Derek Arnold scored what proved to be the winning shootout goal to start the fourth round of the tie-breaking skills competition seconds before Schwartz proved that sometimes an inch is just as long as a mile.
“From behind the net I could see it spinning across the line,” Schwartz, who had a goal and an assist during regulation time, said. “It kind of just explained how our bounces went a little bit this week. It was a tough break.”
That tough break closed out what may have been a watershed game for the home-win starved Solar Bears. It may have only provided one point in the standings but from a long term psyche standpoint, it may have been just what the doctor – or in this case head coach Anthony Noreen – ordered.
“I thought we were much better last night (Thursday) than the first night and much better tonight than we were the first two nights for sure – which is what you want to do. You want to be your best in the third game in three days, which isn’t easy to do,” Noreen said. “I thought we gave up probably less odd-man breaks in all three periods than we did in any one given period in the previous two games. I thought our physical edge at home was really good. I thought we were tough to play against – that was one of my favorite things about tonight.”
The schematic that Noreen drew up more than likely did not look like how the opening period played out. An early roughing penalty to Mark Louis when he tangled with Danick Paquette (more on that game within the game later) gave the Monarchs a power play. The visitors took full advantage when a shot by Joe Diamond deflected off Maxim Kitsyn right to Arnold who drove it past Orlando goalie Ryan Massa for his 13th goal of the season.
Late in the frame, a drive from the point by Matt MacKenzie was redirected out of mid-air by Paquette to Alex Guptill who netted his twelfth of the year at the 15:55 mark. The goal gave Manchester a 2-0 lead that it took to the intermission.
Back to Louis and Paquette. Early in the second, Louis smashed Troy Power into the end boards and drawing a penalty. Paquette, who had annoyed Louis in the first, immediately engaged Louis in a wrestling match that drew minor penalties for roughing.
The feud between the pair continued to simmer and at the 9:08 mark of the period, the two were jawing away during a line change. Referee Ryan Murphy tagged Paquette with a misconduct penalty, sending the Monarchs’ tough guy to the box for just about the rest of the period.
Louis’ moxie lit a fire under his teammates. Eight seconds after Paquette went off, Eric Faille dragged the puck behind Stevens’ net. He fired a pass to the slot where Schwartz, with a defender bearing down on him, snapped off a shot that found the back of the net for his ninth goal, trimming the Manchester lead to one.
A little over six minutes later, Orlando’s top line was at it again. This time defenseman Branden Miller started the sequence with a shot from the point. The puck hit Schwartz in front and bounded over to T.J. Foster who popped it into the net for his 16th of the year and a tie game.
“I thought tonight we were going well again like we were on the road trip,” Schwartz said about himself, Faille and Foster as a line.
A late period penalty to Arnold put the Solar Bears on the power play. With time winding down, Brady Vail took a pass from Eric Baier at the blueline. As Vail drifted toward the center of the ice, a shooting lane opened up and he took advantage. His waist-high shot was in the perfect place for Johnny McInnis to redirect it past Stevens for his 12th of the year and the Solar Bears’ first lead since January 16th at Indy.
Tempers flared again in the third when Paquette and Miller had a run-in that ended with Miller plowing the heavier Paquette into the boards and Josh Brown challenging Miller. During the ensuing four-on-four sequence, some tic-tac-toe passing between Manchester’s Alex Lintuniemi, Paquette and Matt Leitner ended with Leitner sweeping his ninth goal past Massa to even the score at three with more than eleven minutes left in regulation.
Massa (31 saves) and Stevens (30 saves) kept the game tied through the remaining minutes of regulation and into the overtime period. Both netminders were especially tough in the three-on-three extra period with each denying multiple golden scoring opportunities.
In the shootout, neither team found the back of the net in the three regulation rounds. Arnold led off round four by stick handling straight at Massa before unleashing a wicked wrist shot that beat the Orlando netminder high to the glove side. That set the stage for the Schwartz-Stevens showdown that the goalie won by the slimmest of margins.
Louis, who Noreen credited with playing a large role in the contest, shrugged off any talk about his impact on the game by taking on Paquette.
“To be honest, we’re not really worried about the [individual] guys on their team. It was just the team coming together. We have to stick to the system and that worked out,” he said. “Guys like that (Paquette), their strength is when we worry about them. I think that just making them a non-factor [by] just playing our game was what helped us out there.”
Contact the author at Don.money@prohockeynews.com
Follow the author on a Twitter @phnsinlgeaedit or @prohockeynews
You must be logged in to post a comment.