ECHL South Carolina Stingrays

Florida Scores Five in the Third to Thwart Rays 6-5

February 3, 2009 - ECHL (ECHL)
South Carolina Stingrays News Release


Estero, FL - The South Carolina Stingrays gave up five goals in the third period and fell to the Florida Everblades by a final score of 6-5 at Germain Arena in Estero, FL.

"It's very disappointing because we outplayed for the majority of the game," said Head Coach Jared Bednar. "But in this game you have to play the full 60 minutes, and we just couldn't finish."

The Rays took the early lead in the first period on Keith Johnson's 10th goal of the year. It occurred on the power play at 5:30 and was assisted by Josh Godfrey and Maxime Lacroix. The goal would stand up until the end of the period when Ryan Lang would get his 16th of the year for Florida to tie the game up at one.

The Rays took over in the second period. They retook the lead and added a couple more to make it a 4-1 score at the end of two. It started in the first minute of the period when Michael Dubuc got his team leading 23rd goal of the year. The came right off a face-off, with Pierre-Luc O'Brien winning the draw right back to Dubuc who fired it past David Leggio to give the Rays a 2-1 lead. The goal came at 0:57 with O'Brien getting the lone assist. The Rays would add on to that lead at 5:03 while on a 5-on-3. With Godfrey at the point, he found Brad Farynuk at the nearside post. Farynuk slid the puck through the crease to O'Brien who buried it for his 10th goal of the year. Later in the period, while killing off a penalty, Godfrey stepped in front of a pass, skated it into the zone, and fired a shot past Leggio to make it 4-1. The unassisted short-handed goal came at 16:23 of the period and chased Leggio from the game in favor of Anton Khudobin.

In the third period, the Florida Everblades came back with a vengeance. The Rays still had the 4-1 lead through the majority of the period, but at 13:17, Mathieu Roy got his 12th of the year to make it 4-2. Two and half minutes later, at 15:46, Florida got a short handed goal by Kevin Baker, his 37th of the year, to make it 4-3. Just over a minute later, at 16:58, Ernie Hartlieb got his 13th goal of the year, on the power play, to tie the game up four. While still on the power play, and only :23 seconds later, Andrew Fournier got his second of the year to give the Blades their first lead of the night at 5-4. Less than a minute later, at 18:07, Florida got a 5-on-3 goal from Roy, his second of the year, to make it 6-4. While skating four on four, the Rays pulled their goalie to make it 6-5 on Scott Romfo's fourth goal of the year at 19:08. The goal came from a shot just outside the blue line that was assisted by Lacroix.

The winning goaltender was Khudobin who stopped 18 of the 19 shots he faced in 23:37. Leggio stopped 19 of the 23 shots he faced in the first 36:23 of the game, though he did not figure into the decision. The losing goaltender was Jeremy Duchesne who stopped 31 of the 37 shots he faced. The Rays went 2-7 on the power play while killing off three of the six short handed situations they faced.

The Rays will be back in action tomorrow night, same bat time, same bat channel, when they take on the Florida Everblades once again at Germain Arena at 7:30 P.M. You can hear the game live on ESPN Radio 910 the TEAM starting with the Benitos Pre-game show beginning at 7:15.

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ECHL Stories from February 3, 2009


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