ORLANDO, FLA – Losing streaks are never easy to take. It is even harder to swallow them when they occur in the team’s home building and during a push for the playoffs. The Orlando Solar Bears are in such a run of bad luck.
Patrick Watling was one of the few bright spots in Orlando’s loss Wednesday night (Photo courtesy of F. Medina & G. Bassing / Orlando Solar Bears)
Braden Pimm and Rob Ricci each scored two goals and goalie Adam Morrison turned away 27 shots as the South Carolina Stingrays beat the Solar Bears 5-2 Wednesday night at the Amway Center. It was the eight straight win for the Stingrays while Orlando is now in a four-game skid heading into a big weekend series against the Florida Everblades that starts Friday.
The four game skid at home is the second longest of the 2014-2015 season for the Solar Bears, eclipsed only by a five game streak in late October and early November. Wednesday’s loss dropped the Solar Bears season mark at home to 10-11-1-0.
“You want to take advantage of being at home on a homestand but we have to certainly compete and battle a lot harder if you’re going to beat a team that’s in front of you,” Solar Bears head coach Vince Williams said. “We’re chasing [the] playoffs and it’s going to be right down to the end. You have to work, compete and battle. We had a sense of a lot of lost battles, a lot of stick battles and it just contained us and we just couldn’t fight through it for whatever reason and get going.”
The battle of the last two ECHL goalies of the week, South Carolina’s Adam Morrison and Orlando’s Garret Sparks, began with Sparks being tested with three shots in the first thirty seconds of the game. Morrison would have his own three-save sequence a little bit later in the frame as the two netminders looked ready for battle.
Orlando hit the board first at the 5:19 mark of the opening frame. Stefan Della Rovere and Patrick Watling ran a little give and go heading into the Stingrays end. Della Rovere finished the play off by sliding the puck between Morrison’s legs to give the Solar Bears the early lead.
An Orlando penalty late in the period gave South Carolina (26-18-1-6, 59 points) an opportunity to tie the score. It took just 22 seconds of man advantage time to do so when Ricci got to a loose puck off the rebound of a Rob Bellamy shot and lifted it into the net behind Sparks.
The Stingrays outshot the Solar Bears (24-20-3-0, 51 points) by a count of 16-4 in the middle frame but thanks to Sparks, the game remained tied. His best save of the period came in the latter stages when he denied Joe Devin on a shot from close range.
Just as they had on Tuesday night, the visitors took control of the game in the third. Pimm netted his first of the night 31 seconds in when he took a pass from Derek DeBlois and lasered a wrist shot past Sparks’ (43 saves) catching glove into the top corner. The lead doubled just shy of six minutes later when Devin found a wide open Bellamy on the backside of the crease and Bellamy flipped the puck into the net.
Orlando needed a response and got it at the 8:10 mark. It came when Denver Manderson dropped a pass back to the point for Max Nicastro. Nicastro fired a shot and Johnny McInnis redirected the puck past Morrison to give the home fans hope for a comeback.
The scored stayed at 3-2 until the Stingrays pulled away late. Ricci picked up his second of the game with a shot just under the crossbar with 4:12 remaining in regulation. Pimm sealed Orlando’s fate with an empty net tally in the final minute to produce the final score.
Watling, who has four assists in three games since returning to Orlando last Saturday from Toronto, said that the players were as upset at disappointing their fans as they were at falling eight points behind Greenville and South Carolina for the final playoff spot in the ECHL’s East division.
“We love to take pride in our home. It’s a great atmosphere,” Watling said. “We definately need to pick it up for them (fans), that’s first of all, then for ourselves because we know we’re a good team and we just need to put it on paper (standings).”
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