Blades prevail in finale 5-1
The first season is over for the Florida Everblades. It’s time for the second to begin.
The Blades closed out the regular season Saturday with an 5-1 victory against the Orlando Solar Bears at Germain Arena.
The fourth seed in the Eastern Conference, the Blades (46-25) have home ice advantage in the first round of the ECHL playoffs against the Wheeling Nailers.
There was quite a scramble between the Eastern Conference’s fifth through eighth teams on the final weekend. Wheeling moved up from seventh to fifth to draw the Blades, while Adirondack slipped to sixth. Reading tumbled to the eighth spot, with Kalamazoo getting the seventh seed.
Reading faces top-seed Toledo in the first round, with the winner of that series facing the survivor of the Everblades-Wheeling series.
South Carolina takes on Kalamazoo and Manchester faces Adirodack in the other first-round series in the Eastern Conference.
The Everblades open the series at home with games nwxt Friday and Saturday. The series switches to Wheeling for games April 20 and 22, with a fifth game at Wheeling April 23 if needed. Should the series need a sixth or seventh game, those will be played at Germain Arena April 25 and 27.
A three-goal third period, including the first two tallies for rookie Ralph Cuddemi’s professional career, broke Saturday’s game open for the Everblades.
“It was a good 60 minutes for us,” Everblades coach Greg Poss said. “I was happy that the guys worked hard and played well defensively. That’s the way we’ve got to play in the playoffs. I thought we played hard and put on a good show for our fans.”
Brendan O’Donnell wasted no time in extending his goals streak to 10 consecutive games, scoring 4:17 into the contest. O’Donnell skated in from the blue line to the left of Solar Bears goalie Rob Madore, cut in front and scored on the power play. Danny New and Justin Agosta assisted on O’Donnell’s 17th goal.
O’Donnell equaled Keith Anderson’s team record for consecutive games scoring a goal. Anderson set the mark in 2003.
Before the first period was over, the power-play unit struck again.
Team captain Matt Marquardt notched his 15th goal of the season. Rookies Greg Gibson and Chase Golightly got the assists.
Orlando came into the weekend with the ECHL’s best penalty kill unit in road games, but the Everblades scored one power-play goals Friday and two on Saturday.
Rasmus Tirronen got a second consecutive start and win in goal for the Everblades.
Other than a few hard checks, the Solar Bears looked early on like a team ready for the season to end. Orlando didn’t have a shot on goal until just 27 seconds remained in the first period.
Once the period ended with Florida up 2-0, it was the Everblades who took on the appearance of a team that had lost interest. As a result they let the Solar Bears get back into the game.
A penalty on Marquart allowed Orlando to score with 27.9 seconds left in the second period. Rylan Schwartz banged a slap shot off the crossbar and into the net just long enough to count before it ricocheted back onto the ice.
A break while being down a man changed that. The shorthanded Blades intercepted an Orlando pass and headed up ice, with O’Donnell passing to Brent Harris in front of Madore. Harris’ shot went top shelf, off the crossbar and into the net.
The Solar Bears, who had been putting heavy pressure on Tirronen, were stunned. The letdown proved costly.
The announcement of Harris’ goal had barely finished when Cuddemi added another Florida goal. The recent signee scored his first goal with an assist by Kevin Lynch. In less than 45seconds, the Everblades’ lead had gone from 2-1 to 4-1.
Cuddemi was playing his ninth game since signing with the Everblades. He came into Saturday with three assists.
“I was starting to wonder if I’d ever score one,” Cuddemi said. “I’ve gotten that out of the way and now I can just look to the future.”
It wasn’t long before the rookie fresh out of Canisius College stuck again. Cuddemi took a pass from Corey Syvret on a break and beat Madore a second time. Matt Stanish also had an assist.
“Cuddemi had two nice goals,” Poss said. “He’s got good hands. It takes those guys a little time to get used to” the change from college to professional hockey.”
“It’s definitely different,” Cuddemi said. “It’s exciting for me.”
Now the team has to make some decisions as to which players will make the playoff roster. The Blades potentially could be bolstered by a number of players being sent back from AHL teams to the Blades, such as center Ryan Martindale, defensemen Logan Roe and Mike Cornell, goalie Daniel Altshuller, and forward Ethan Werek.
“We’ll let the smoke clear tomorrow and sit down and figure it out,” Poss said.
The Wawa Sunshine Cup, given to the season series winner between Florida and Orlando, was settled before this weekend began. The Everblades went 10-3-1-0 against the Solar Bears in the first year of the Wawa Sunshine Cup.