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Final Score: Admirals 5, Hershey 1
First Period Recap: Dan Sexton opened up the scoring 9:52 into the first period with an even strength goal. John Kurtz and the impressive Sami Vatanen get the assists. Sami extended his point streak to six games with seven assists. The Admirals went 0-for-1 on the power play and they successfully killed two penalties. The Admirals defense seems to have finally come to form and they only allowed five shots all period, Norfolk had 17.
Second Period Recap: The middle frame had a combined two goals scored although the teams only combined for nine shots. Vatanen scored his fifth of the season, and his third on the power play. Patrick Maroon and Hampus Lindholm helped get the goal. Just over six minutes later the Bears Jeff Taffe scored his 16th goal of the season, unassisted. Norfolk got out shot 5-4 and had to kill two penalties but had four power play chances.
Third Period Recap: The Admirals finished the game strong, scoring three goals in the final 20 minutes and adding two fights onto the game sheet. Just 1:27 into the period the Bears' Patrick Wellar dropped the gloves against Pierre-Luc Letourneau-Leblond. Soon after, Devante Smith-Pelly got into a scrap with Julien Brouillette, DSP had nine PIMs on the night. 6:33 into the period Maroon netted his 15th of the season with Vatanen and Frederik Andersen helping him out. Josh Brittain didn't want to be left out as he scored on the power play with Maroon getting his third point of the night, Nate Guenin also assisted. John Mitchell finished off the goal scoring with 3:10 remaining in the game. Kurtz and Lindholm each recorded their second assists of the night. Andersen stopped 16 of 17 shots.
If the Admirals can repeat this performance tomorrow it could be huge. Wilkes-Barre/Scranton and Connecticut both lost tonight and of course the Admirals beat Hershey.
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The Good: The defense held a pretty decent team to just 17 shots and outscored them easily.
The Bad: DSP had a lot of penalty minutes, I don't know if that is just frustration or if he wants to pick up this new role.
The Ugly: It is always a good night when I can't figure out what to put here.
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Next Game: Saturday, March 9th at 7:15pm vs. Hershey