Blades fall, slip into division tie
Home isn’t quite so sweet these days for the Florida Everblades.
The Blades dropped their fourth in five games at Germain Arena Friday night, falling 3-0 to the Toledo Walleye.
Leading the ECHL’s Eastern Conference with 79 points, has won the first two of the three-game series between the clubs with a Saturday night contest remaining.
The Everblades (70 points) fell back into a first-place tie in the ECHL South Division as South Carolina won 4-2 at third-place Atlanta on Friday.
Florida’s streak of leading the division since opening night is on the line Saturday. While the Blades (35-21) take on Toledo again, South Carolina is at home against Adirondack.
Florida has managed only two wins in its last eight games overall.
“We’re having trouble scoring goals,” Everblades coach Greg Poss said. “There’s no question about it.”
Poss passed along some of the blame on the team’s defensive effort.
“I thought we deserved more (offensively) tonight,” Poss said, “But when you have trouble scoring you have to do a better job on the other end. A lot of the goals they’re scoring, they’re beating us one-on-one, or we’re passing them the puck for chances.”
For most of the night, the scoreboard had zeroes on both sides. Toledo finally put the first goal of the night on the board with 5:49 left in the second period. Zach Nastasiuk scored his ninth of the year, tapping in a rebound in front of Everblades goalie Rasmus Tirronen.
The Walleyes’ Kyle Bonis, a former Everblade, scored with 9:40 left in the game to make it 2-0.
Backup Toledo goalie Jake Paterson stopped 32 shots for the shutout victory.
The Everblades’ offense overall has been in a deep freeze for the last five games, averaging less than two goals per contest over that span. The slump goes back much further. The local restaurant that offers free wings when the Blades score four times in a home game has only had to dish out those wings once since Jan. 29.
“They’re finishing on their chances and we’re not,” Poss said. “That’s the difference.”
Poss pulled Tirronen for a sixth attacker with more than three minutes remaining Friday in a vain attempt to get the offense started. Instead, Shane Berschbach hit an empty-netter to set the final margin and send much of an already small crowd to the exits.
“We can’t let it frustrate us,” Poss said. “It happens every year that we have trouble scoring goals. It’s a normal part of the season, but we need to make the playoffs. So we need to pick it up in that area. It’s not like we’re getting outplayed. It was pretty much a 50-50 game, could have gone either way. They scored. We didn’t.”
Tirronen allowed two goals on 18 shots.
The game remained scoreless for just over 54 minutes not so much as a result of great defense or goalie play as of inept offense on both sides.
The two teams combined for 11 shots on goal in the first period. The period was a drastic change from Wednesday night when the Everblades had 10 shots on goal in the first five minutes.
The Blades didn’t have a shot on goal until only 7:46 remained in the first period Friday. The Walleye had all of two by then. Of the two Toledo shots, one came when Tirronen stopped Evan Rankin on a breakaway.
That stretch without an shot on goal included the first Florida power play, extending the team’s run of man-advantage futility to 11 consecutive chances without a goal. That streak reached 12 in the second period.
“The last power play we threw two pucks away,” Poss said. “We had guys wide open, and we’re just making poor decisions on the blue line with the puck. The defensemen have got to make a lot better decisions. One time we passed it to a wall (of opponents) and no one was even there. There was a wide-open shot on the other side.”
It’s all ECHL South competition for Florida the rest of the way after Saturday’s game. That starts with a six-game road trip to Atlanta, Greenville, and South Carolina. The Everblades won’t be home again until March 25 against Greenville.