Jacksonville Icemen ring in sixth ECHL season with victory over Orlando Solar Bears

Victor Hadfield had waited since March for his first Jacksonville Icemen goal. Brandon Fortunato had been counting the goalless games for even longer.

So what better way to ring in a new season?

Powered by goals from a pair of familiar contributors on defense but unfamiliar finishers at the net, and roared on by a raucous crowd inside VyStar Veterans Memorial Arena, the Jacksonville Icemen opened their sixth season in style by defeating the Orlando Solar Bears 5-2 in Saturday's ECHL hockey opener.

Hadfield notched his first career Icemen goal only 2:09 into the game, and Fortunato tallied his first regular-season strike in the waning moments to send the crowd of 8,967 fans home happy.

Two more frequent scorers in Jacksonville blue and white, Christopher Brown and Ara Nazarian, put the game away. Brown sliced inside from the left to score the go-ahead goal near the end of the first period, and Nazarian spun a reverse finish into the net for a third-period insurance strike.

"The first 10 minutes, we came out flying, we were buzzing," Icemen coach Nick Luukko said. "Our forechecking was creating turnovers and we cashed in."

WAIT ENDS FOR HADFIELD, FORTUNATO

In 16 games with the Icemen last season, Hadfield never scored a goal.

The defenseman needed only 129 seconds in 2022 to change that. He finished off a crisp shot off Alex Whelan's assist, a play that survived a video review for the first goal of the new year.

Then, as the clock ticked away, it was Fortunato's turn. In 39 games in the 2021-22 season, the 26-year-old from Albertson, N.Y. had grown into an assist machine with 25 assists, but his only goal came outside official competition in the ECHL All-Star Game.

That changed in the last minute. Moments after Whelan had just missed on an empty-netter, Fortunato made no mistake when the puck popped loose.

"Your D's got to be active and contribute offensively," Luukko said, "and that's good to see them cash in."

WONDERFUL WIN FOR WHELAN

Whelan, assigned to Jacksonville from the American Hockey League's Hartford Wolf Pack, made his Icemen debut one to remember.

After assisting Hadfield's goal, Whelan scored the Icemen's second shortly afterward, putting away a loose puck in front after setup work from Ryan Lohin and Derek Lodermeier. With his assist on Nazarian's third-period goal, he closed the night as the first star of the game.

He's already shown he can score, recording 48 goals in his college hockey career at Quinnipiac. Whelan spent most of the night on a line with Lohin and Nazarian, a quick-moving unit that troubled Orlando all night.

"We want to get the puck and get to the north right away, get it up to the forwards," Luukko said. "We don't want to mess around and bring it back too much."

DEFENSE STANDS STRONG AGAIN

The Icemen, who compiled the strongest defensive record in the ECHL last year on their way to the second round of the Kelly Cup playoffs, limited the visitors to 17 shots and shut out Orlando except for a 34-second span midway through the first period.

Michael Brodzinski and Dmitry Semykin scored in rapid succession, the latter from a near-impossible angle close to the boards, in a rough minute for 22-year-old Icemen goalie Olof Lindbom. But Lindbom, a 2018 second-round New York Rangers draft pick making his ECHL debut, proved unbeatable the rest of the way.

On Orlando's infrequent threats at the net — they mustered only two shots in the entire second period — Lindbom came up big with a pair of stops early in the third. The Solar Bears' Joe Carroll also broke in one-on-one after taking the puck off Jacob Panetta, but shot over the net as Orlando squandered a short-handed chance.

"I like the way we responded [after Orlando's goals]," Luukko said. "There's no real panic. It was kind of next shift and go back to playing our defense."

Clayton Freeman covers high school sports and more for the Florida Times-Union. Follow him on Twitter at @CFreemanJAX, and sign up for the First Coast Varsity newsletter at https://profile.jacksonville.com/newsletters/first-coast-varsity/.

This article originally appeared on Florida Times-Union: ECHL hockey: Orlando Solar Bears at Jacksonville Icemen season opener