Brady Vail scored his 20th goal of the season Wednesday night (Photo courtesy of F. Medina & G. Bassing / Orlando Solar Bears)
ORLANDO, FLA – Back in the days when “SchoolHouse Rock” ruled educational television on Saturday mornings, the animated series declared the number three to be “a magic number”. If there needed to be any verification of the magical qualities, one needed to look no further than the events of Wednesday evening at the Amway Center.
Rylan Schwartz scored two goals and added two assists to lead a well-balanced scoring attack as the Orlando Solar Bears (31-24-3-5, 70 points) defeated the Greenville Swamp Rabbits (28-27-8-1, 65 points) 6-3 in front of an announced crowd of 5,325. Johnny McInnis chipped in with a goal and two helpers while Denver Manderson had three assists to lead a group of ten players with at least one point in the game.
Three goals in the first period and three more in third proved to be exactly what the Solar Bears needed to win their third straight at home. It also allowed Orlando to move within one point of the eighth and final playoff spot in the ECHL’s Eastern conference.
Schwartz, who was signed by the Solar Bears the day after Christmas, nearly had a hat trick goal that would have been Orlando’s third score in the final period. The fans thought that he had done it and tossed their hats onto the ice only to find out that T.J. Foster had gotten the tip of his stick blade on the puck before it crossed the goal line, temporarily delaying a celebration of Schwartz’ 20th of the year to another evening.
“I looked right at him (Foster) and he gave me the look saying ‘sorry bud’ so I kind of knew right away,” Schwartz said about the goal that wasn’t. “I kind of knew I was close [to twenty] but I didn’t know if I needed two or three or four today.”
Schwartz’ night began with two scores before the game was eleven minutes old. The first came at the 6:36 mark of the opening period when Nicklas Lindberg took the puck along the half boards and zipped a pass to the slot where Schwartz had plenty of time to collect, aim and rip a shot past Greenville goalie Mackenzie Skapski.
Three and a half minutes later, the Solar Bears penalty killing unit turned defense into offense when Brenden Miller went coast-to-coast before being turned into the corner. The puck was poked out near the slot where Schwartz found it and fired on net. Skapski made the save but failed to find the rebound. Schwartz beat a defenseman to it and fired the puck into the wide open net for his 19th goal in 31 games.
The Swamp Rabbits, who have historically been a tough team for the Solar Bears to play against, got on the board at the 15:33 mark of the period when an errant Orlando pass landed on the tape of Jack Combs who lasered a shot past Solar Bears netminder Ryan Massa for his 22nd of the season.
McInnis answered Combs’s tally with a power play goal with 1:08 to go before the intermission. The sequence began with Schwartz sliding a pass to Manderson who threw the puck toward the net. McInnis beat a defender down the middle and redirected the shot in for his 17th. A late Orlando defensive lapse allowed Scott Fleming to set up Josh Nicholls for his 17th of the year with 5.2 seconds left in the frame to cut the Solar Bears lead to 3-2.
The second period belonged to the goalies as Massa and Skapski, a New York Rangers draft choice, went toe-to-toe throughout most of the frame. Massa was the busier of the two as he faced 15 Greenville shots while Skapski looked at nine from the Solar Bears. The lone goal in the stanza came off the stick of Combs who blasted a shot between the Orlando netminder’s legs with 17.4 ticks left before the intermission to even the score at 3-3.
“They’ve got probably the most talented player in the league (Combs) and if you give him chances he’s going to bury them which happened a couple of times,” Solar Bears head coach Anthony Noreen said. “The third period all we talked about was playing hard, being heavy, finishing checks [and] playing honest. That’s all we talked about. We felt we’d get rewarded if we did that and that was the case in the third.”
The reward Noreen was looking for came in a span of 44 seconds early in the decisive third period. Erik Bradford, who has begun to find his offensive game of late, netted his eighth of the season when he drove toward the net and caromed a shot off the inside of Skapski’s right pad into the net at the 1:56 mark. On the very next shift, Brady Vail used his stick blade to alter a Jack Rodewald shot/pass enough to beat the Swamp Rabbits goalie for his 20th goal of the season, joining Foster at the benchmark number.
“I didn’t even know until they announced it to be honest. We’re just trying to get wins right now,” Vail said about his milestone score. “Back to back goals can really turn a game around. Everyone always says the shift a goal is scored is always the biggest one.”
Massa, who finished the night with 34 saves to earn his fifth straight win, had things well under control at that point. He was able to turn back everything the Swamp Rabbits threw at him in the final frame, stopping all nine shots he faced. Foster closed out the scoring when his redirect of what would have been Schwartz’ third turned into his own 24th.
Schwartz said that having all three lines getting in on the scoring is just what the Solar Bears need as they push for the playoffs.
“It’s big when you can get all three lines scoring. Even Bradfird is on an eight game point scoring streak right now. Him contributing is huge. Johnny Macs (McInnis) has 17 goals. There’s a lot of guys around there and Vail’s been doing what he’s doing and our line is playing well,” Schwartz said. “If we can have three lines going, it’s going to be hard to stop us.”
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