ORLANDO, FLA – Orlando Solar Bears Head Coach and General Mangaer Drake Berehowsky was none too pleased with his team’s performance in a 4-1 loss to the Idaho Steelheads on Sunday evening. He was hoping that the Solar Bears would bounce back on Tuesday night at the Amway Center in the rubber game of the three-game series between the two squads. For roughly eight minutes of play, Orlando looked more like the team that had dominated on Saturday night.
Unfortunately for the 4,659 Solar Bears fans in the stands on a rainy and cold night, those initial minutes turned out to be the best the home team had in them all night.
Led by two goals from Spencer Naas and multi-point games from six others, the visiting Steelheads (37-22-3-2, 79 points) cruised to a 7-2 victory over the Solar Bears (34-23-4-1,73 points). Mathieu Foget and Jackson Playfair had the goals for Orlando, whose magic number for clinching a spot in the ECHL’s Kelly Cup playoffs next month stayed at six.
Orlando’s Mathieu Foget (24, purple) tucks the puck past Idaho goalie Tomas Sholl for his 19th goal of the season during Tuesday night’s game (Photo courtesy of Fernando Medina / Orlando Solar Bears)
“I just thought we stopped competing. You said it there,” Berehowsky said when asked what happened during the final 52 minutes of play. “We didn’t compete for a full sixty minutes.”
After a less than enthusiastic effort on Sunday, the Solar Bears came out of the locker room to start the game with a much better sense of purpose on Tuesday. In the first 90 seconds of the first period, Orlando tested Idaho goalie Tomas Sholl, the third best goalie in the entire ECHL going into the contest, with five shots on net. The fury with which the home team was playing led to a delay of game penalty on the Steelheads just 1:53 in.
That first power play added four more shots to the Solar Bears total, the last of which opened the scoring at the 3:25 mark. The play was all effort on the part of Foget as after taking a pass from Troy Bourke in the neutral zone, Foget went into hyperspeed. He split the Idaho defense at the blueline and in the blink of an eye was cutting to the net. As Sholl committed to stop a low short side shot, Foget drew the puck across the crease and lifted a backhander into the top corner for his 19th goal of the season – 18 of them with the Solar Bears – and his fourth man advantage tally of the season.
The visitors responded just shy of two minutes later when a bounce off a skate victimized Orlando starting goalie Corbin Boes. Charlie Dodero collected the puck along the half boards to Boes’ left and fired it toward the low slot area. Connor Chatham, who was there locked up with a defender, had the disc hit his left skate and carom past the Solar Bears netminder for his first goal of the season at 5:13.
With twelve minutes left in the opening stanza, the Solar Bears held an 11-5 advantage on the shot clock. Over the next seven minutes – actually 6:27 of clock time – the Steelheads asserted themselves and took control of the contest. It all started with Sholl taking a sure goal away from Otto Somppi. Soon after, Idaho put Boes and the Orlando net under seige, creating a wild scramble at the crease from which Elgin Pearce knocked a loose puck home for his 16th of the season and his third goal in as many games against Orlando.
A penalty to the Solar Bears Chris LeBlanc put the Steelheads on the power play and they took quick advantage. Only six seconds elapsed between the offensive zone faceoff and Nolan Gluchowski wristing a seeing-eye shot through traffic and past Boes for his 11th and a 3-1 Idaho lead with 8:19 still left in the first period.
At that point, Berehowsky replaced Boes, who was making his first start since March 2nd, with Connor Ingram after Boes had allowed three goals on 14 shots. By the time Mitch Hults was left shaking his head after Sholl robbed him with a quick glove hand save with 5:34 left in the frame, Idaho had gone on a 12-3 run of shots on the way to an 18-17 advantage and a 3-1 lead at the intermission.
Solar Bears forward Troy Bourke (left) battles with Idaho’s Connor Chatham along the boards (Photo courtesy of Fernando Medina / Orlando Solar Bears)
“I think when you play good teams, they can grab the momentum and run with it pretty quick. I think that going up one was big for us and then they quickly answered. We missed a couple of chances that probably could have put us up in the game and then they came on hard,” Playfair, who was seeing his first action since March 2nd due to injury, said. “I think we’re a good team when we compete, when we play like Drake probably pointed towards. The biggest thing is that teams are going to press you and no matter how you come out, no matter how hard you start, when they’ve got a good team over there with some good players they’re going to come back and make a push at it.”
With a fresh sheet of ice and forty minutes to get back into the game, Orlando wanted desperately to start off by owning the second period. That wish was quickly squashed as the Steelheads added to their lead only 1:23 into the middle frame. Reid Petryk made the big play, driving down the ice to the left of Ingram before drifting a diagonal pass across the low slot. Naas got loose as the Solar Bears marking him lost contact, leaving the Idaho forward open enough to fire the puck home for his first of the game and 14th of the season.
The Solar Bears had a chance to cut into the lead when Idaho’s Chatham was sent to the penalty box at the 5:22 mark. What should have been pressure on the offensive end became a few anxious moments for Ingram when Steve McParland got loose for a breakaway that the Orlando netminder fended off and a wraparound followup that Ingram dove to knock away. It was just the start for Ingram, who was tested later when he faced a Steelheads’ two-on-none break that led to a testing shot by A.J. White that the goalie stopped.
A little past the midpointof the period, some Solar Bears frustration bubbled upand Alex Schoenborn was sent to the sin bin. Halfway through the advantage, Gluchowski teed up the puck for a one-time bomb by McParland that beat Ingram, who was trying to go post-to-post, to the short side for his 24th and the team’s second power play goal of the game.
At 5-1, most of the energy in the building had been sucked out but Playfair put some of it back late in the stanza. Hults was the catalyst, carrying the puck into the Idaho end and drawing just about every Steelheads defender to him. He was able to send an aerial pass that Playfair knocked out of the air, collected and beat Sholl to the short side for the rookie’s 5th of the year to make it a 5-2 game heading into the third.
“If you watch it again, Hultsy kind of came into the zone and picked everybody up and took their attention and laid it over there [to me],” Playfair said. “It was on its way down so I was kind of giving it an assist in knocked it down. Then I just tried to get it off quick. I think their goalie [Sholl] on Sunday he stood on his head and made a lot of saves. Tonight he made a lot more big saves so with a guy like that you just want to get it on [goal] quick. You don’t really need to pick a spot per se. If you can get it there, you might get oneto go by him and that’s kind of what happened.”
Orlando’s Alex Schoenborn (left, purple) chases after Idaho’s Will Merchant during Tuesday’s first period (Photo courtesy of Fernando Medina / Orlando Solar Bears)
When Sholl (38 saves) stoned LeBlanc early in the final period, the writing began to appear on the wall for the Solar Bears and their fans. Despite an energized offensive attack, Orlando just could not find the range to beat the Steelheads’ rookie netminder. Frustrations again started to boil over when the Solar Bears Mike Monfredo and Shaquille Merasty got into a beef with Idaho’s Keegan Kanzig and Schempp (Merasty and Kanzig has dropped the gloves in the second so theirs was a reacqaintance thing) which earned all four early showers.
Berehowsky pulled Ingram (24 saves on 27 shots faced) with a little over five minutes remaining in regulation, hoping for a spark that could become a raging inferno of goals. It was not to be as Will Merchant scored into the open net from center ice for his 12th at 15:52. Naas finished off the scoring with a shot from the boards that Ingram never saw until it was past him for Naas’ second of the game and 15th of the season.
With nine games left in the season and a race for playoff spots and home ice advantage in the first round in full force, a two game skid could be seen as a huge problem – especially the way the two losses played out. When asked how he planned to fix the shortcomings from the last three days, Berehowsky prefered to look at it from the “big picture” perspective.
“You’ve got to look at the big picture I think. Teams are going to have ups and downs,” he said. “We said this at the start of the year, [that] it’s a young team and we’re still mixing up the lineup so there’s going to be lots of ups and downs and I’m sure we’re not done yet. We’re not going to get too down [because] it’s only two games. We’ll do video, we’ll work at practice tomorrow and hopefully they’ll be ready to go [for] the next game.”
That next game is a Thursday matchup with a tough Atlanta Gladiators squad that is in the hunt for the fourth and final South division playoff spot. Asked about how the Solar Bears can put the two losses to Idaho behind them and move forward, Playfair boiled it down to one word: work.
Orlando’s Shaquille Merasty (left, purple) looks for a rebound from Idaho goalie Tomas Sholl (Photo courtesy of Fernando Medina / Orlando Solar Bears)
“You’ve just kind of got to work at it [to move forward]. I think at every level, you see teams go through slumps. I mean I don’t want to call it a slump because it’s only two games here back-to-back,” Playfair said. “I think the guys in the room and the coaching staff understand that when it comes down to work, you can fix it pretty quickly and easily. I think we’ve got guys that work hard, they compete every night. That’s all it’s going to be – going in, getting back together and just coming out and putting sixty [minutes] together the next time we step on the ice.”
Thursday night’s game against the Gladiators at the Amway Center is set for a 7 p.m. opening faceoff.
Notes: Final shots were 42-40 in favor of Idaho… The Solar Bears went 1-for-3 on the power play while the Steelheads were 2-for-3… With his assist, Orlando’s Bourke extended his point streak to six games (3 goals, 10 assists)… Orlando’s roster saw more changes on Tuesday as defenseman Oleg Sosunov was recalled to the AHL’s Syracuse Crunch and blueliner Akim Aliu was loaned to the AHL’s Tucson Roadrunners. The two callups necessitated bringing defenseman Rob Mann off the IR list to play… Through Tuesday’s games, the Solar Bears hold a three point lead (73-70) over Jacksonville for second place in the division and home ice in the first round with one game in hand (Orlando has played 62 while Jacksonville has played 63). With its win on Tuesday, South Carolina holds a two point lead (66-64) over Atlanta for the fourth and final spot. The Gladiators have an advantage with four games in hand.
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