Kolarik's Hat Trick Leads Whale Past Ads 5-2, Tempers Flare

The Norfolk Admirals extended their losing streak to five games with a 5-2 loss to the New York Rangers AHL affiliate the Connecticut Whale Saturday night.

Chad Kolarik opened the scoring for the Whale with a power play goal as John Kurtz sat for interference. The first period ended 1-0 with the Whale out shooting Norfolk 15-10.

Kurtz redeemed himself by leveling the score at one, scoring his first goal of the season with assists from Chris Wagner and Hampus Lindholm. The Admirals couldn't turn the goal into any positive momentum though. Less than two minutes later Kolarik regained the lead for Connecticut.

John Mitchell spent most of the second period in the box, for Goaltender Interference, Boarding and a fight with Brandon Segal, but the Admirals were able to kill off all of the penalties and out shoot the Whale 11-10 in the period.

Just over a minute into the third Kolarik finished off his hat trick by putting his third goal of the night behind the previously sturdy Goaltender Frederik Andersen and Marek Hrivik recorded his third assist of the night. Almost immediately Tommy Grant put the game out of reach with Connecticut's fourth goal.

Emerson Etem scored an unassisted goal later in the period but it wouldn't matter in the grand scheme of things as Kris Newbury finished the game off with scoring on an empty net to give us a final score of 5-2.

After Nebury's empty netter things got ugly. In the immediate aftermath of the goal, Sami Vatanen was given a ten minute misconduct for abuse of the official and it only got worse from there. With less than a minute on the clock Blake Parlett of the Whale charged Lindholm as the Admirial defender entered the zone, making knee to knee contact.

Peter Holland and Patrick Maroon both retaliated. While Maroon was taking out every bit of frustration on Parlett's face, Holland 'fought' with J.T. Miller, earning the both players game misconducts for a secondary altercation. When the dust settled 55 minuets of penalties were handed out including a game misconduct and a major for charging against Parlett.

The Ads travel back home to Norfolk to face the Hershey Bears (Captials Affilate), one ofthe only teams below them in the standings on Wednesday. The Albany Deivls are last in the conference but have two games in hand with Norfolk up two points and Hershey up one.

The Bears are missing the scoring punch that career AHLers, Keith Aucoin and Chris Borque gave them last season. Aucoin had 70 points in just 43 games last season before getting called up to Washington and Borque had 93 points in 73 games.