Nicklas Lindberg (18, black) had two primary assists for the Solar Bears Saturday night (Photo courtesy of F. Medina & G. Bassing / Orlando Solar Bears)
ORLANDO, FLA – Losses are never easy to take. Knowing that the loss could have been a win makes it that much more frustrating.
Saturday night at the Amway Center, the Orlando Solar Bears played a solid game in front of their second largest home crowd of the season. Still, it was not enough as Ben Marshall’s goal in the fifth round of a shootout gave the Indy Fuel (26-26-2-0, 54 points) a 3-2 win over Orlando (23-20-2-5, 53 points).
Marshall’s score, which came as he out-waited Solar Bears netminder Rob Madore before threading the needle with the puck, closed out what felt like a weird contest. To be sure, Orlando had its chances with six power plays (only one of which was successful) in regulation which contributed to a large number of chances. The fact that the Solar Bears survived spending more than half of overtime on the penalty kill spoke much louder about how much they wanted the win.
“I thought our bench overall handled it really well. Four-on-three [penalty] kill [is] the hardest kill in hockey and we went out and got two of them,” Orlando head coach Anthony Noreen said. “You feel like when you do that, karma is probably going to come back and something will happen that is good. That part is frustrating – you wanted more for the guys after getting those two big kills and blocked shots and things like that.”
Madore and Indy goalie Shane Owen stole the show in the opening period as the teams battled to a scoreless draw. The pair combined for twenty-one saves, the best of which may have been Madore’s catching glove stop on a Brandon Wong shot.
The visiting Fuel kicked off the scoring 3:10 into the second when Cody Sharib pounced on the loose puck after a Madore save and tucked it inside the post for his twelfth of the year. Seconds later, the first of a combined five penalties on the frame began to break up the flow of the contest.
It was not until its second man advantage of the frame that the Solar Bears connected. Nicklas Lindberg made the key play by drifting down to the base of the face-off circle to Owen’s right. He looked up and spotted Brady Vail alone in the slot and immediately sent a pass out. Vail did the rest, nailing a one-timer past Owen for his seventeenth of the season at 12:32 to even the score.
Less than a minute later, Alex Lavoie intercepted an Orlando pass and deposited the puck into the back of the net. It was Lavoie’s thirteenth of the year and it put the Fuel back in front.
Orlando had a golden opportunity late in the frame to even things again. A pair of overlapping Indy penalties led to twenty seconds of five-on-three power play time in the middle of three and a half straight minutes of Solar Bears advantage. Owen and the Fuel survived, sending the teams to the final twenty minutes separated by just one goal.
The Solar Bears took just over a minute of playing time in the third to even things up once again. Lindberg again was that catalyst, sending a cross-crease to Jack Rodewald who redirected it in on the shirt side. It was the rookie’s twelfth tally and the second score for the line of Lindberg, Vail and Rodewald.
“I think our chemistry on our line [with] Vail and Rodewald, we find each other really well out there,” Lindberg said. “It was just disappointing that we couldn’t get one more and win the game tonight.”
Madore (33 saves) and Owen (33 saves) matched save for save after that, sending the game into overtime. Patrick Watling took an early hooking penalty in the extra period followed a little over three minutes later by a tripping call on Lindberg. The Fuel failed to score, sending the contest into the shootout.
Following goals by Rhett Bly and Watling in the first round, both goalies buckled down and did not allow a score until the fifth round. That was when Marshall got Madore to go down before lifting the puck over him. Eric Baier was denied on Orlando’s final shot, giving the Fuel the win.
Madore said that despite the loss, coming away with three points made it a good weekend.
“We had three games [that] we ended up splitting and we got three points,” he said. “Obviously I think we wanted to come out with that extra point but I thought we played really hard, a hard game all weekend. Maybe not complete games but we played three really, really good games.”
Contact the author at Don.money@prohockeynrws.com
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