Knoxville Ice Bears

Ice Bears Depleted Bench Falls to Fayetteville 3-2

date: 12/17/2010

Knoxville’s Depleted Bench Falls to Fayetteville 3-2
For immediate release. For more information please contact Dave Feather
at (865) 525-7825 / (865) 254-7825 or at
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Fayetteville, NC – As the Ice Bears loaded the bus and settled in for the seven hour trip east to Fayetteville, NC, the accommodations seemed roomier.  The team was making the trip without Jason Ford, Chris Bratina, David Segal, Jimmy Jensen and Andrew Gallant. 

Despite playing with only 14 skaters and rostering an emergency backup goalie, the Ice Bears established the mind set of overcoming this challenge and enjoy the ride back with a moral and SPHL victory.

Fayetteville struck first early in the first period on a goal by former Ice Bear Sean Cryer at 4:27 of the period.  The goal was assisted by Jason Hill and Chris Leveille.

The desire to overcome adversity, Knoxville evened the scoring :44 seconds later on a hard working goal by pesky forward Frank Furdero with the set up coming from Ice Bears leading scorer Emery Olauson and new comer Brett Valliquette.   

Knoxville carried the play for the balance of period but was unable to solve Fayetteville’s rookie netminder Travis Yonkman.

The second period had the Ice Bears on attack with the team playing the type of hockey Coach Mike Craigen enjoys.  Knoxville out worked Fayetteville at every turn, peppering Yonkman with numerous quality scoring chances and out shot the home team 16-5 in the middle frame.

The best opportunity to pull ahead occurred when Knoxville was killing a penalty and Furdero picked the puck off the FireAntz pointman’s stick and raced in alone on Yonkman.  As he was ready to shoot, he was interfered with by Fayetteville – the infraction resulted for Furdero. 

With the potential lead on Furdero’s stick, Yonkman bested him after a nifty move and trying to stuff the puck around his leg pad and into the net.

After quality scoring opportunities and the penalty shot, the teams skated into the locker room still tied up 1 – 1.

The third period saw the fatigue of the shortened bench start to show through when Knoxville was flagged for two penalties within a :54 second span.  Fayetteville was set up on a 5-3 power play and struck on a goal just as the first penalty expired. 

FireAntz sniper Robert Sich fired a hard snapshot and Knoxville’s goalie Bryan Hince made the difficult save but as he was looking for the puck to cover, Anthony Perdicaro poked the puck through Hince and the puck slowly trickled across the goal line.

The Ice Bears had a golden opportunity when the FireAntz were flagged for back to back penalties.  On the second power play, Fayetteville forward Leveille picked up the puck on a one-on-one when he made a slick move on the defenseman and beat goalie Hince on an unassisted goal.

The Ice Bears were given another opportunity on the power play and they capitalized this time to draw within one.  Mike Tuomi fired a blistering shot from the point to put the game at 3-2 with: 28 seconds to tie the game.

Knoxville pulled the goalie to gain the extra attacker but was unable to establish an offensive zone presence to force the game into overtime.

The Knoxville Ice Bears are at home tomorrow night as they host the Louisiana Ice Gators for Guaranteed Fight Night at the Knoxville Civic Coliseum at 7:30.  For more information and tickets call 865-525-7825 or www.knoxvilleicebears.com.

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