ORLANDO, FLA – Riding a five game win streak, the Orlando Solar Bears were highly confident that the visiting Indy Fuel would be victim number six. There was just one problem with that theory: no one told Fuel forward Brandon Wong.
Wong scored two goals and added two assists while teammate Alex Lavoie netted two goals if his own as Indy (25-25-2-0, 52 points) derailed the Solar Bears (22-20-2-4, 50 points) by a 5-3 final Wednesday night at the Amway Center. Brady Vail scored two goals for Orlando in a losing effort.
The final score was not a real indicator of how the game went as the Fuel entered the final minute of the second period up by five before the Solar Bears began a comeback that fell short.
“[It was] an awful start. Really an awful forty minutes. The bottom line is right now we do not have enough skill in our lineup to not check 200 feet of the ice and to not play the game the right way and to not put pucks behind teams and play flawlessly in our structure,” Solar Bears head coach Anthony Noreen said. “I think you saw tonight what happens if we get away from our structure and if we cheat things and if we try to make moves at the blueline and if we don’t have a jump and a will when we start the game.”
In its last five contests, Noreen’s team had been able to overcome a couple of slow starts to grab wins. Knowing that coach Scott Hillman’s Indy squad was coming off of three one-goal losses to league leading Missouri, Noreen hoped that the Solar Bears would up their game and play a solid sixty minutes. Instead what he got was as uneven an effort as the team has put forth all season.
The Fuel opened the scoring midway through the first period when Wong beat a defender to the front of the Orlando net and redirected a pass from Dylan Clarke past Solar Bears starting goalie Ryan Massa for his seventh goal of the season. A late frame power play gave the visitors a chance to increase the lead, which is exactly what happened when Lavoie took a give-and-go pass from Wong and netted his tenth of the year.
Indy’s power play got another chance seven minutes into the middle frame and again it cashed in. Just twenty seconds into the advantage, Massa made a save on Zach Miskovic’s shot from the point but the rebound skidded out to Rhett Bly who whipped it into the back of the net for his fourteenth score of the season.
Brady Vail scored two of Orlando’s goals in Wednesday’s loss to Indy (photo courtesy of F. Medina & G. Bassing / Orlando Solar Bears)
Looking to lit a fire under his team, Noreen pulled Massa in favor of Rob Madore. The first shot he faced came off the stick of Lavoie who took a pass from Daniel Ciampinu and broke in alone. Lavoie made the most of the opportunity, scoring his second of the game to run the lead to four.
When Matt White made a pass across the top of the crease to Wong who lit the goal light for the second time, the Fuel had a 5-0 lead with a little over twenty-four minutes of game time left. It also left Noreen quite frustrated.
“I don’t get how you can come to the rink and not be ready to play hockey,” he said. “If you’re a hockey player and its in you, I don’t understand. You can maybe make a mistake – that I understand – but to come out and not have heart and not win loose pucks races and not finish checks and not win battles. I hope I never understand that because the day I do is probably the day I step away from the game.”
Orlando finally got on the scoreboard with 52.7 seconds left in the second. It came when Johnny McInnis tipped a shot by Branden Miller out of mid-air and past Indy netminder Shane Owen. The goal was McInnis’ fourteenth of the season.
The Solar Bears attempt at a comeback continued early in the third. Patrick Watling, playing in his first game in a couple of months because of injury, used his speed and vision to back the Indy defense off before putting a perfect pass on the stick of Vail for a tap-in goal. Eric Faille picked up an assist on the score, giving him 50 points for the year and putting him in the company of Jake Cepis (twice), Mickey Lang and Denver Manderson as 50-point Solar Bears scorers.
Vail closed the scoring with less than a minute left in regulation when his blast from just inside the blueline rocketed past Owen (32 saves) for his fifteenth of the year.
Noreen was pleased with how his squad won the final period of the contest, something he hopes his players will remember when the teams meet again Thursday night.
“I thought we responded well in the third when we challenged them. There wasn’t [any] quit in the room,” he said. “And the best news is we play them again tomorrow night.”
Contact the author at Don.money@prohockeynews.com
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