ORLANDO, FLA – The last time Orlando Solar Bears forward Patrick Watling was on the ice at the Amway Center, he was scoring a game winning goal with less than a second left in overtime in the team’s final home game of the 2015-2016 regular season against the Florida Everblades. It may not have been as dramatic but Thursday night Watling was Mr. Clutch once again.
Patrick Watling netted the game-winning goal Thursday night (Photo courtesy of G. Bassing & F. Medina / Orlando Solar Bears)
Watling’s goal with 6:32 remaining in the third period capped a third period comeback as the Solar Bears (1-1-0-0, 2 points) edged the visiting South Carolina Stingrays (0-2-1-0, 1 point) 2-1 in front of an announced crowd of 4,114. Goalie Ryan Massa made 23 saves to earn his 20th career win in an Orlando jersey while newcomer Ethan Werek netted a pair of assists.
“My eyes lit up. I couldn’t believe it,” Watling said about how the game-winning play developed. “I just put it right in. It was a great feeling.”
The deciding sequence came off an smooth entry into the South Carolina defensive zone by Watling, Werek and linemate Eric Faille. As Faille went to the net, Werek waited while Watling drifted into an open space to the left of Stingrays goalie Parker Milner. Milner never saw the puck as Werek’s shot was blocked and bounced to Watling who squeezed a backhander between the post and Milner’s left skate for his first tally of the season.
“We had a good entry. We came in wide and Werek tried to hit me through the middle,” Watling said. “It went to the net and Faille did a great job being out in front. It went to me and I just backhanded it in.”
For the better part of two periods, Massa and Parker were deadlocked in a tight battle of wills between the pipes. South Carolina created the better of the scoring chances in the opening period, outshooting Orlando 8-4 as the host Solar Bears struggled to record just one shot over the final ten minutes of the frame.
Milner, the fourth year pro out of Boston College, made arguably his best save of the night five minutes into the second stanza when he had to dive to block a shot by Orlando’s Joe Perry after being upended behind his net. The netminder’s efforts were rewarded a few minutes later when during a Stingrays power play, Olivier Archambault made a curl move into the middle slot area and unleashed a wicked slap shot that rang off the inside of the post to Massa’s right and into the net.
Despite being down by one and outshot 19-14 through two periods, Solar Bears head coach Anthony Noreen liked what he was seeing out of his team and was confident that if they stuck to playing within the designed system, good things would happen.
“We liked the way we played in the first. We liked the way we played in the second. Our message [between periods] was to stick to it,” Noreen said. “It’s very easy when you don’t get the results to kind of get away from it, maybe try something cute or maybe lag back and hope to get a breakaway. It’s nice when the guys do what you ask them to do and they get rewarded for it. We stuck to our process, we stuck to our game plan and it worked.”
Playing with a sense of urgency in the final period, the Solar Bears created an opportunity when former Orlando hero Scott Tanski was forced to take a holding penalty. During the man advantage, Brett Findlay got the puck near the point and skated toward the face-off dot to Milner’s right, dodging an oncoming defender. Using a second Stingrays player as a screen, Findlay rocketed a shot that screamed over the goalie’s right shoulder into the back of the net to even the score at the 4:11 mark.
With the score tied, Massa became the focal point of the contest as he came up with a series of crucial stops. A couple of them were clean break-in chances (one by Archambault and another by Domenic Monardo) while another came in an odd-man rush situation.
As Massa held the fort at his end, the Solar Bears continued to push hard on the offensive end. That push led to Watling’s score as part of Orlando outshooting South Carolina 15-5 in the final twenty minutes.
“The guys did a great job of taking care of the puck. That third period was a character team coming out and not being denied,” Massa said about his teammates’ effort in the third. “It was a lot of fun to be a part of and I was just happy to do my job tonight.”
Notes: Orlando finished the night 1-for-6 on the power play while South Carolina went 1-for-3…The Stingrays’ Milner made 27 saves in suffering his first loss in regulation this season…After Thursday’s reunion with Tanski, the Solar Bears will get reacquainted with former players Tyler Murovich, Shane Bakker, Blake Kessel and Jay Williams as the Atlanta Gladiators head into town for games on Friday and Saturday night starting at 7 p.m.
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