THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1997, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Saturday, February 15, 1997 TAG: 9702150679
SECTION: SPORTS PAGE: C1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY JIM DUCIBELLA, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: NORFOLK LENGTH: 71 lines
It was fitting that the Hampton Roads Admirals grabbed the first bus out of town following their 5-2 loss to the Raleigh IceCaps on Friday night at Scope.
The destination was Charleston, S.C., where tonight the Admirals and the South Carolina Stingrays will vie for first place in the ECHL's East Division. The Stingrays have 70 points, one more than Hampton Roads. Each team has played 49 games.
``It's sad we didn't win this game and put ourselves in first place,'' Admirals coach John Brophy said. ``We're playing for first place anyway, but we would rather be a point ahead of them going down there. It's going to be tough.''
It will be tougher still if center Victor Gervais can't play. Gervais checked Raleigh's Rod Pamenter so hard early in the third period that both he and Pamenter were injured.
Gervais, the team's second-leading scorer, has a strained lower right leg. He will travel with the team but his availability won't be known until closer to game time.
Pamenter, meanwhile, lost consciousness for almost a minute and lay motionless for nearly 20 minutes while two doctors and trainers from both teams tended him. Raleigh trainer Delion Cummings knelt over Pamenter, cradling the player's neck with his rubber-gloved hands while waiting for the ambulance that took Pamenter to Sentara Norfolk General Hospital.
Pamenter was diagnosed as having a concussion. Early indications were that he suffered no other injuries.
The Admirals' final home game until Feb. 28 was forgettable from the start. The IceCaps broke a 1-1 tie by scoring four second-period goals - aided in large part by seven second-period power plays - to send many in the crowd of 7,151 home early.
``I thought we played a good first period, but in the second, we went to hell in a handbasket,'' Brophy said. ``All those penalties, all those power plays. Give them credit. They worked hard, very hard. They worked hard the last time they came in here, too.''
That was eight days ago, in a game Hampton Roads won 4-3 in a shootout after trailing 2-0 early. That night, five IceCaps shots hit the posts behind the Admirals goalie.
Friday night, Darryl Paquette wasn't as fortunate.
``I'd stop the first shot, but it seemed there always was someone there, shooting into an empty net,'' said Paquette, who was making his first start in two weeks. ``God knows this isn't the way I wanted to come back.''
Raleigh's Darren Colbourne scored just 52 seconds into the second period on a second-chance slap shot. Paquette blocked Colbourne's first blast a moment before, but the puck went to Pamenter, who passed it crisply to Colbourne. This time, he scored.
That seemed to set the tone for the rest of the period. Raleigh consistently got second, third and, sometimes, fourth shots on Paquette. Brophy replaced Paquette with Marc Seliger after the second period with the Admirals down 5-1.
``I really screwed up the first one,'' Admirals forward Kelly Sorensen admitted. ``I was running all over the place out there and the other guys had to start filling in for where I should have been. We looked like chickens with their heads cut off out there.''
David Cunniff's goal at 6:57 gave Raleigh a 3-1 lead. That became 4-1 less than three minutes later when Joakim Wassberger beat Paquette on the power play.
Frustrated, the Admirals began turning good fortune to bad. In a span of 1:24 later in the period, they went from having a power play to being a man down when Gervais, then Randy Pearce, were sent off the ice for penalties. ILLUSTRATION: BILL TIERNAN/The Virginian-Pilot
A game jacket John Brophy wore Dec. 11 and a framed photo with his
bolo tie will be sent to the Hockey Hall of Fame to mark his 800th
win. The Admirals' coach was honored by booster club members Friday.