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Fresh Rookies Help Admirals Beat the Binghamton Senators, 2-1

The Norfolk Admirals held off a third period surge to defeat the Binghamton Senators, farm team of the Ottawa Senators, in the first game of a weekend series.

By shawndubstep
John Wright

Final Score: Admirals 2, Senators 1

First Period Recap: The Admirals got off to an exciting start Friday night as Patrick Maroon dropped the gloves with Wacey Hamilton after Hamilton put rookie star Sami Vatanen into the boards in a rough manner. Then 8:06 into the period Steven Whitney, fresh from college, scored his first professional goal on the power play. John Mitchell and Charlie Saurault got the assists. Both teams had nine shots on goal and Norfolk killed the only penalty called against them.

Second Period Recap: Norfolk dominated most of the second period, getting off 15 shots on and only allowing nine. A big part of that domination was due to Binghamton taking four penalties, but the Admirals only converted on one. With 7:02 remaining in the second Maroon scored his 22nd goal of the season with rookies Sarault and Vatanen getting the assists. Sami and Pat are tied for the team lead in points at 44. The Senators had three power plays but the Admirals kept on killing them.

Third Period Recap: The final period is where the Senators pressured the most. The Admirals seemed to almost go into a turtle mode. Bingo out-shot the Admirals 11-7 but still took four more penalties which broke up their momentum early on [Ed. Note: Hugh Jessiman took two of the penalties. HA! I Just like mentioning his name. -CK]. The best Binghamton could do was end Frederik Andersen's shutout though. With 6:42 remaining in the game when Cole Schneider scored his 14th goal of the season, giving us a final score of 2-1 Norfolk.

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The Good: The play from Whitney, Sarault, and Kyle Bonis is awesome right now. This Admirals team lacked a lot of speed since Emerson Etem and Kyle Palmieri had been called up and they traded away Dan Sexton. The energy they bring at this point of the season is refreshing to see and gives the Admirals an edge over some teams that may be worn out from a tough season.

The Bad: Hershey beat Syracuse keeping the Bears two points ahead of us in the standings with only seven games left in the season.

The Ugly: The offensive threat from the Admirals in the third period was almost non-existant. Andersen could have easily had a shutout but you can only bend so much before you break. He had a lot of awesome saves all game though.

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Most Valuable Ducklings:

3rd MVD: Frederik Andersen - He stopped 28 of 29 shots on goal, against one of the top four teams in the conference and even wanted to play the puck when he was skating off the ice on delayed penalties, all about the team!

2nd MVD: Charlie Sarault - Had two power play assists, something he had a knack for in junior hockey where he had 33. All this guy needs to really work on is his faceoff ability, but he is young and mold-able!

1st MVD: Steven Whitney - Had a power play goal in his first professional game and we all hope in Norfolk that it is the first of many. He had an awesome game and his speed is ridiculous. One thing I like about college players is even though he is smaller player he is not afraid to try and be physical.

Next Game: Saturday, April 6th at 7:15pm ET also against Binghamton at Scope

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