Norfolk Admirals Return to Last Place with 1-0 Loss

Norfolk Admirals 0 - St. John's IceCaps 1

The Norfolk Admirals fell to the IceCaps in the second game of a back to back series. The game was full of penalties and some awesome goaltending for both teams.

First Period Recap: The first period had no scoring, but the Admirals played really well. The only thing that slowed them down was taking three penalties and giving St. John's a 5-on-3 advantage. Luckily we have a pretty good goalie in Viktor Fasth making the starts and he did everything in his power to try and get the win last night. The IceCaps out shot the Admirals 10-5 in the first 20 minutes of regulation.

Second Period Recap: The Admirals corrected their penalty problem in a bit in the second, but not enough. They took one penalty and that was enough for St. John's to score.

Spencer Machacek beat Fasth one second after the penalty ended when, for seemingly no reason at all, Gabe Guentzel left the front of the net to pick up his stick, completely throwing the other three defenders still involved in the play out of position. The fact that Guentzel is even still playing at this point is bad news for the Norfolk fans. I know he is a young prospect but he just is not fundamentally sound for whatever reason.

On that penalty kill Fasth made some pretty nifty saves with his toes. The Admirals managed to get off more shots, although I think it was because St. John's knows we pose almost zero offensive threat right now, we had 11 shots to their six in the period.

Third Period Recap: The third period had the usual suspects messing things up and slowing down the tiny bit of momentum that the team could get. Jay Rosehill made the team kill four minutes of penalty time after he high sticked an IceCap player. John Kurtz took a minor for slashing just three minutes after that penalty kill was up. Another three minutes after his penalty Ryan Parent was whistled for roughing.

However, the Admirals had a chance at the end when Jason Jaffray finished the game in the penalty box for St. John's. A couple minutes before this the Admirals finally played desperately and had a ton of chances to score but no one could finish.

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The Good: I won a silent auction for a pink autographed base from the top baseball affiliate for the Baltimore Orioles!

The Bad: The Admirals ended up playing nearly an entire period short handed with all the penalties combined.

The Ugly: We are in last place yet again since the Adirondack Phantoms won tonight.

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2nd MVD - Dan Sexton- He was basically the only shining light on our power play. According to the Admirals twitter account he had four of his six shots on one power play alone.
3rd MVD - Kent Huskins- I really disliked this signing but the guy has been nearly flawless and does well on the point for power plays.

Next Game: Sunday, January 20, at 5 PM ET in Charlotte, North Carolina