ORLANDO, FLA – Orlando Solar Bears Head Coach Drake Berehowsky is never one to mince words at a post game press conference. If his team played well, he is generally very complimentary. When his squad makes mistakes and plays poorly, he does not hide his displeasure.
Sunday afternoon at the Amway Center, Berehowsky was beyond displeased with the performance his troops put on in front of an announced crowd of 5,092. He was down right angry.
Led by a two goal, two assist game from former Solar Bear Max Novak and two more lamp-lighters by Cole Ully, the visiting South Carolina Stingrays (6-1-0-0) blasted Orlando 8-2. Chris LeBlanc and Colby McAuley each scored for the Solar Bears (2-4-0-1) but it was not near enough for the home team to weather a 53-shot barrage from the Stingrays.
Orlando’s Chris LeBlanc (16, purple) fires the puck past South Carolina goalie Logan Thompson (left) during Sunday’s first period (Photo courtesy of Fernando Medina / Orlando Solar Bears)
“We’re not playing the way we want to play. We’e not playing towards our identity, Berehowsky said following the loss. “We’re turning pucks over. We’re trying to dangle at blue lines. You don’t do that in the professional game. If you do that, you’re going to sit on the bench. They have a great team over there [South Carolina] but we didn’t help ourselves because of the style we thought we were going to play. I don’t know what we were thinking but we didn’t play towards our identity and that’s what was the problem.”
In the time between Tuesday’s win over Jacksonville and Sunday’s game, the Solar Bears roster saw several changes. It started on Wednesday when San Jose sent forward Artem Ivanyuzhenkov and defenseman Marcus Crawford after recalling Marcus Vela and trading him away. At the same time, the Tampa Bay Lightning were reassigning defenseman Oleg Sosunov and forward Jimmy Huntington to Syracuse.
On Halloween, the Manitoba Moose of the AHL called Berehowsky and asked him to send forward Brent Pedersen to them on loan. Things accelerated on Saturday when goalie Spencer Martin was recalled to Syracuse after Tampa traded netminder Louis Domingue to New Jersey. The Crunch in return loaned forwards Peter Abbandonato and Mikhail Shalagin to the Solar Bears to get some playing time. On Sunday, Berehowsky re-signed goalie Clint Windsor to replace Martin as Zach Fucale’s backup.
Needless to say, it was a dizzying time for fans but not for Berehowsky.
“There’s always going to be things like that [roster changes] that happen. I’m not going to use that as an excuse and neither should the guys,” Berehowsky said. “There’s always guys coming in and out and it is our job and their job to learn everything and be prepared and we didn’t do a very good job tonight.”
As much as Orlando may have not been prepared, South Carolina certainly was ready. It took just 1:47 for the Stingrays to open the scoring when Mitch Vanderlaan redirected a shot from the point by Jaynen Rissling over a screened Fucale for his first goal of the season in his very first ECHL game.
Just over four minutes later, the visitors’ lead doubled when Ully was in the right place to tuck in a loose puck at the right post for his second of the year. It came out of a scramble in front where Fucale stopped a try by Matthew Weis but the puck skidded away to Ully.
As the midpoint of the opening period arrived, South Carolina had built up a 15-0 shot advantage. The Solar Bears needed a shot of energy and they got it when Hunter Fejes and LeBlanc broke away on a two-on-one rush. Fejes got past a defender and laid a perfect pass to the slot where LeBlanc one-timed it just under the crossbar behind goalie Logan Thompson to trim the deficit to 2-1. It was Orlando’s first recorded shot of the period and the game. Abbandonato was credited with the secondary assist, his first ECHL career point.
South Carolina’s Andrew Cherniwchan (28, white) pokes home his third goal of the season as Orlando goalie Zach Fucale (25) and defenseman Mike Monfredo try in vain to stop him (Photo courtesy of Fernando Medina / Orlando Solar Bears)
Holding a lead on both the scoreboard and shot board (South Carolina outshot Orlando 22-6 in the first), the Stingrays started the middle frame just as they did the first. It took 1:22 for Andrew Cherniwchan knocked down an attempted clearing try by the Solar Bears and proceeded to cash in the rebound of his own shot for the forward’s third tally of the season.
The hole the Solar Bears had to dig out of grew to three at the 9:01 mark of the stanza when Ully struck for his second of the afternoon. This one came at the end of an extended pressure-filled shift in the Orlando end. Novak ended up with the puck below the goal line and fed Ully at the base of the left faceoff circle. Ully one-timed it into the back of the cage to make it 4-1.
Orlando was handed an opportunity on the power play late in the second and finally cashed in. It came when McAuley cleaned up a loose puck near the crease, popping it over Thompson for his first of the year to make it 4-2.
That would be as close as the home team would get. Before the the second period was over, Novak restored South Carolina’s three-goal margin. He did so by getting wide open in the slot and redirecting a feed from Vanderlaan for his first tally of the 2019-20 campaign. It was also the last shot Fucale would face as Berehowsky replaced him with Windsor.
Smelling blood on the ice, the Stingrays went in for the kill in the third period. In a span of 4:34, the visitors struck for three more goals as Orlando’s defense completely fell apart. First it was Eddie Wittchow who banged home the rebound of a Casey Bailey shot during a stint of four-on-four play for his third of the year. Just 22 second later, Novak took a pass from Thompson and went for a skate. He busted through center ice, blew past a Solar Bears defenseman and lifted a backhander into the top corner on Windsor for his second lamp-lighter of the day.
South Carolina capped the scoring when Mark Cooper lasered a one-time slap shot from the slot into the cage at the 8:22 mark for his third of the season, all three coming in games against Orlando.
Tempers flared when as Cooper’s shot zipped past Windsor, Cherniwchan made contact with the goalie. Solar Bears defenseman Kevin Lohan grabbed Cherniwchan and in the ensuing scrum, Orlando’s Monfredo and Cooper dropped the mitts.
Orlando’s Colby McAuley (85, purple) pops home his first goal of the season during a second period power play in Sunday’s game (Photo courtesy of Fernando Medina / Orlando Solar Bears)
Orlando was not able to convert on a couple of power plays down the stretch, finishing with a total of 17 shots on Thompson in the contest. During his time between the pipes, Windsor stopped 17 of the 20 South Carolina shots he faced after Fucale turned away 28 of 33.
The Solar Bears have very little time to think about the loss as Jacksonville comes to town on Tuesday for Orlando’s fourth annual School Day morning game. Asked if it was a good thing playing so soon to get the memories of Sunday out of the player’s heads, Berehowsky promised that his troops would not be allowed off the hook so easily.
“We’re going to watch the whole game tomorrow [on video]. The guys are going to get in there early, we’re going to cut it up and make sure they see where the mistakes happened,” he said. “They have to learn from these things. As a staff, we have to figure out who the proper guys are to play – the guys who want to play within our system and within our structure.”
Notes: The Solar Bears finished the day 1-for-7 on the power play while the Stingrays were 0-for-8… Thirteen different South Carolina players recorded at least one point in the game… Orlando’s LeBlanc played his 128th career game with the Solar Bears, tying him with Denver Manderson for fifth place on the franchise’s all-time list for games played.
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