Final Score: Binghamton 4, Norfolk 1
First Period Recap: After a dominating first period of hockey and then forty minutes of “Oh shit Freddy, stand on your head!” on Friday night the Admirals came out of the gate like a horse who didn’t know it was at the Kentucky Derby. The Binghamton Senators, AHL affiliate of the Ottawa Senators, did however know that there was a game being played. Norfolk could barely get out of their zone long enough in the first four minutes of the game to get a line change. The Admirals finally broke at the 7:53 mark with Darren Kramer scored his first goal of the season. Kramer had just one goal in 21 games last season in the AHL. The period ended with Norfolk down in shots 9-5 and no penalties against either team.
Second Period Recap: The middle frame started off with a bang when Andre Petersson scored just eleven seconds in, Mika Zibanejad and Mike Hoffman had the assists. With the Senators up 2-0 Antoine Laganiere took the first penalty of the game 3:23 into the period, Antoine is a minus-3 through 4 games with no points. Norfolk still has a pretty decent penalty kill, currently third in the league and killing 91%, so they were able to hold off Binghamton. Norfolk kept the struggle going until after the midway point, when they finally got their first shot on goal for the period and quite a few fans golf clapped sarcastically. Rickard Rakell was not pleased by the sarcasm and scored 13:02 in with an unassisted goal, his third in four games, and ended Nate Lawson’s shutout. No other scoring happened in the period and Norfolk was down on shots again 13-6 and couldn’t convert on their only power play chance.
Third Period Recap: In the final twenty minutes Norfolk did a good job of padding their shot total with terrible percentage shots from against the boards and under the faceoff circles. Basically the Senators said “NO YOU CAN NOT GET NEAR THE NET!” which turned out to be an effective strategy. The Admirals had 13 shots while the Senators had only eight. The wrong Grant, Derek Grant, scored to put Bingo up 3-1 just over four minutes into the period. Norfolk didn’t really get anything going and even if they did Lawson had the answer for it. Jim O’Brien put the game away with an empty net, short handed goal with under a minute left. Both teams had one power play in the third period.
The Good – Norfolk's penalty killers didn't allow a goal all weekend.
The Bad – Norfolk's defensive zone play is pretty ugly right now and they can't really break out at all.
The Ugly – Norfolk really, really struggled playing even strength hockey all weekend. They had one 5 on 5 goal and gave up three of them. Its cool that our power play is ok for now, but you can't live off of that.
The Three Iceholes
Third Icehole – Brad Staubitz – Can the Ducks call him up and send back Patrick Maroon? Thaaaaaaaanks. I guess I should explain why. He sucks. [Ed. Note: NO! NEVER! -CK]
Second Icehole – Antoine Laganiere – He took two penalties in the game and that isn't good when the team only has three.
First Icehole – Everybody Else – Yes, the entire team. This game was kind of embarrassing and hopefully it is used as a learning moment and everyone improves and it never goes down like this again.
Next Game: Albany @ Norfolk – Friday, October 18th at 7:30 PM EDT