ORLANDO, FLA – Through a quirk in the scheduling, when the Orlando Solar Bears hosted the South Carolina Stingrays at the Amway Center Sunday afternoon, it was the final time the two teams would meet in the City Beautiful until a potential playoff meeting. Based on the result, the Solar Bears certainly would like another shot at their division nemesis on home ice.
Denver Manderson celebrates after scoring against South Carolina on Sunday (Photo courtesy of G. Bassing & F. Medina / Orlando Solar Bears)
The visiting Stingrays (5-5-1-0, 11 points) got goals from Marcus Perrier and Alex Gacek in the third period to break open a tie game and hung on for a 3-2 victory in front of an announced crowd of 4,468. With the win, South Carolina took the weekend set of three games by a count of two victories to one.
“I thought they (South Carolina) definitely had a better start than us. I thought we got much better as the game went. I thought at the end was probably the best hockey we played all weekend, probably the last ten or twelve minutes of the game,” Solar Bears head coach Anthony Noreen said. “Probably our biggest downfall tonight was we had power plays in the third [period] and just didn’t capitalize. It wasn’t that we didn’t capitalize, we just didn’t get the momentum. We actually lost momentum coming out of them.”
Noreen said that the final game of a three game weekend – or in this case three games in four days – is usually the toughest to get and maintain energy and momentum and it was very much the case for the Solar Bears (5-5-1-0, 11 points). South Carolina came out wanting to gain control but in hockey it only takes one shot to score and Orlando did just that, taking the lead early.
The Solar Bears scored on their first shot thanks to some crisp puck movement. Defenseman Nikolas Brouillard moved the puck to Cason Hohmann in the face-off circle to the right of Stingrays goalie Parker Milner. Hohmann then zipped a cross-ice pass through the slot to Denver Manderson in the other circle. Manderson caught the pass and ripped a shot inside the short side post past the netminder for his third goal of the season just 1:21 into the contest.
“It was my first shift and I had just come off the bench and I think we had a three-on-two [break],” Manderson said. “Hohmann made a good pass and I was just fortunate to find some net.”
As the Stingrays began to pick things up after the Manderson tally, Solar Bears goalie Kasimir Kaskisuo found himself pretty busy. His best save of the opening frame camewhen a steal by Patrick Gaul led to a one-on-one battle that the netminder from Finland won by using his left shoulder to knock the shot away.
While Kaskisuo was seeing plenty of rubber on net and many more zooming past him wide, Orlando was finding it tough to get scoring opportunities. It took the Solar Bears until there were less than five minutes left in the period before they could register their second shot on net on a drive from center ice that Milner easily stopped.
The game stayed at 1-0 in favor of the Solar Bears well into the middle stanza until an unfortunate set of circumstances caught up to them. At the 17:12 mark, rookie defenseman Jon Jutzi was called for delay of game when he knocked the net off its pegs. During that penalty kill, Stingrays blueliner Colton Saucerman – who at one time wore the Solar Bears jersey – unloaded a jarring open-ice hit on Hohmann who went down hard and needed assistance from the Orlando athletic trainer to get back up and eventually head to the locker room.
Immediately after the hit, Ty Stanton challenged Saucerman and received an unsportsmanlike conduct call, giving South Carolina a two-man advantage and leaving Noreen and the Orlando fans collectively scratching their heads. The Stingrays took advantage of the opportunity as Rob Flick beat Kaskisuo with a quick shot from the slot that caught the inside of the iron and dropped in.
“You’ve got a group of guys who battled for almost a hundred minutes without giving up a goal and in that situation we felt like we were probably going on a five-minute power play,” Noreen lamented. “To be down five-on-three for over a minute, it was tough to swallow.”
Orlando had a chance early in the third to regain the momentum with a power play opportunity when Flick went to the box for elbowing. The Stingrays held the Solar Bears off the board and turned the successful kill into a lead shortly thereafter. It came when Saucerman fed the puck to Perrier who drove a shot through some traffic past Kaskisuo (25 saves) on his blocker glove side. For Perrier it was his second tally of the season, both of them coming against Orlando.
When Gaul was nabbed for high sticking at the 4:19 mark, the Solar Bears had another chance to take control but once again the Stingrays killed off the penalty. Soon after, Gacek made a steal in the Orlando end and tested Kaskisuo’s glove hand. The young goalie again made a clutch save – this one with his glove hand – to keep the game close.
At the midpoint of the frame, the Stingrays increased their lead when Gaul mad a pass from the side boards to Gacek who was alone in front of the Orlando net. Gacek immediately roofed a shot over Kaskisuo’s shoulder and just under the crossbar for his first of the season and a 3-1 lead.
Down by two, the Solar Bears found another gear on offense and began to press the Stingrays in their defensive zone. They found some previously closed shooting lanes opened up and piled numerous shots on Milner (24 saves) but the South Carolina netminder was equal to the task.
Orlando finally solved Milner with 31.4 seconds left in regulation when Eric Baier, who was playing in his 300th career ECHL game, used a Joe Perry screen to score his second goal of the season. The Solar Bears tried to regroup their offense after the ensuing faceoff but time ran out before they could find the tying goal.
Manderson admitted that in the wake of Saturday night’s 3-0 win over South Carolina that maybe a better effort in the opening period Sunday could have made a difference in the outcome.
“We’re doing all we can. I think everyone wants to get on a roll here at home. Everybody knows the importance of that,” Manderson said. “Last night was a good effort. I think we probably wish that we came out and had a little better first period to put ourselves in a better spot. I think we trust the process and I think we’re getting better. Things in the locker room feel pretty good and we’ll keep going.”
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