Blades retaliate, KO Nailers 5-2
The Florida Everblades rallied from a 2-0 deficit to defeat the Wheeling Nailers 5-2 Saturday night at Germain Arena.
Saturday’s win ended the team’s first two-game losing streak of the year, while snapping Wheeling’s five-game winning streak by salvaging the final of a three-game series.
The Everblades remain undefeated (5-0-0) in Saturday games this season.
“It’s kind of a relief,” Florida coach Greg Poss said. “You never want to lose three in a row at home, especially with the way we lost last night. We were getting scored on, those funny goals a lot. We really had to dominate the game to win it.”
Poss said after Friday’s game, in which the Blades outshot Wheeling 51-24 in a 5-3 loss, that if his team outshot opponents like that on a consistent basis, the wins would come. Saturday night, at least, he was right. The Blades had a 43-25 edge in shots Saturday.
Florida trailed 2-0 before getting even. To say the scoring that started the rally came from unexpected sources is an understatement. Neither Carter Sandlak nor Rob Florentino, who tallied the first two Blades goals, found the back of the net before Saturday night.
Sandlak, demoted earlier this week from Charlotte of the AHL, scored his first Blades goal at 6:58 of the second period to get Florida on the board.
“I don’t think it was a hero kind of situation,” Sandlak said. “We were down two-nothing in the second. The guys stayed with it. I was fortunate to get a couple of bounces. Just stuck with it and had a good game.”
Defenseman Florentino got the Blades even in the game with a wrist shot past Wheeling’s Brian Foster.
“It’s huge now that we’ve lost several good players to call-ups and stuff,” Poss said. “It really helps to have guys step up and score. Any time you lose three or four players, the dynamic of the team changes. Guys gotta refind their roles.”
Finally, on a third-period power play, the Blades took their first lead in this three-game series. Corey Syret put in a rebound at 4:31 of the period to give Florida a 3-2 advantage. It is the defenseman’s fifth goal of the season.
It didn’t take long to make the score 4-2. Ethan Werek scored his sixth. Sandlak picked up his second assist of the night on Werek’s tally. Sandlak’s three points are his first this season, either in the AHL or with Florida.
“I came down here, they told me to get my confidence back, to handle the puck and make plays,” Sandlak said. “I felt good out there, our line was finally clicking. It takes a couple of games to get into it, and once we started clicking we found the back of the net. It feels good to get some points under my belt. Hopefully we can continue it and see what happens.”
Wheeling went to a sixth skater during a power play with just under three minutes remaining, but that backfired when Brent Harris scored on the empty net to put the game out of reach. It was an unassisted short-handed tally for Harris and his 10th goal of the season. Harris has scored in six of his last seven games and is second in the ECHL in goals scored.
With Syvret sent off with a double-minor penalty, the Blades penalty-killing unit held up for four minutes late in the second to keep the score at 2-2 heading into the final period.
“We did a really good job with the penalty kill in the second period,” Poss said. “That was huge. We didn’t let them get set up during the penalty kill. I think they only had one or two shots in four minutes. That really depletes a team when they can’t get their power play going.”
Things got chippy in the third period, with players on both benches poking sticks toward each other at one point, and the officials having to come between players on the ice on several occasions.
Saturday’s start was all too similar to Friday night. Florida trailed 1-0 after the first period despite a 16-6 advantage in shots on goal.
Defenseman Brent Stern gave Wheeling another early lead with his slap shot from the left point. It is the third time in three games that the Nailers took a first-period lead on the Everblades.
“It looked like it was going against us again,” Poss said. “They had a lot of puck luck all three games. I thought we outplayed them badly (Friday) and we didn’t get the points. The key is our guys stuck with it. “
Riley Brice cashed in on a flurry in front of Florida netminder Anthony Peters to put Wheeling up 2-0 early in the second period.
Peters made his third start in goal in a row despite giving up 11 goals in the first two games of this series.
While Poss prefers to alternate his goalies, the Blades are short-handed in goal at the moment. Daniel Altshuller, 7-1 with a 1.50 goals-against average, is out with an unspecified injury.
Florida’s Matt Willows was hauled down from behind on a breakaway in the second period. Wheeling defenseman Harrison Ruopp was given a two-minute penalty and a 10-minute misconduct penalty, but Willows was not awarded a penalty shot.