Back home, Admirals snap skid in OT

By Jim Hodges,  Correspondent

NORFOLK

With 1:10 left in overtime Friday and going on fumes, Ryan Craig won a puck in the corner, sent it to Brandon Bochenski, who sent it to Ty Wishart, an unlikely destination.

He was loitering about 35 feet out from the net.

"I closed my eyes and shot," said Wishart, laughing after his goal gave the Admirals a 4-3 win over Albany at Scope.

Wishart's second goal of the season doubled his output of a year ago.

"We had to get that win, had to get those points," he insisted, much more seriously.

The victory broke a four-game Admirals' losing streak and was a welcome homecoming after an odyssey that included eight games in 13 days and had them tottering back to town at sunup on Thanksgiving Day.

"This was huge," Admirals coach Darren Rumble said. "It keeps us in (contention for a playoff spot). If you had told me when the month started that we could be at .500 at the end of November, I'd have kissed your foot. Now we can win (Saturday) and be .500."

They are 11-12-1.

It's way too early to talk of the American Hockey League playoffs, but being among the top eight teams is a barometer of sorts for a team that has been out of the running by Thanksgiving in each of the past two years.

In winning, the Admirals overcame a game-tying goal that was kicked in by Albany's Mike Angelidis, according to goalie Dustin Tokarski, but not according to referee Nygel Pelletier, who summoned his linesmen before ruling.

The goal came with 8:48 played in the third period and might have taken the energy from a suddenly revived offense that had gotten third-period goals by Blair Jones and Matt Syroczynski to erase a 2-1 Albany lead that was created on Admirals' turnovers.

"Instead, it seemed like it got us going even more," said Jones, the lone shining light on the trip with two goals and five assists.

Instead of fading, the Admirals continued to make life miserable for Albany goalie Mike Murphy, who had to deal with more traffic than the Friday toll-takers at MacArthur Center at 10 a.m.

On the next shift, Mark Parrish and Bochenski had shots within a stick-length of Murphy. The Admirals continued the barrage for the rest of the game and outshot Albany 46-30.

"It's called work," Jones said of the frontal assault onto no-man's-land in front of the goal. While one might believe you play a game, "this is a job," Jones said. "My junior team had one word on the wall of the locker room: work."

That labor brought four goals and a welcome respite from a drought on the trip in which the Admirals scored no more than twice in any of the final seven games.

They failed to score on their single power-play opportunity Friday and are 2 for 21 over the past nine games. What they are doing isn't working, and Rumble vowed a change, beginning with this morning's practice and tonight's game.

For now, though, they can enjoy an overtime win over the River Rats, to whom the Admirals lost in overtime on Nov. 14.