The Orlando Solar Bears season has been a strange one. Full of streaks, fits and starts and inconsistent play.
That much might have been somewhat expected considering the new makeup of the team. New management in Toronto changed the structure and relationship between the home team and the farm team. The Solar Bears would become a true minor league outfit, connected and intertwined with the Toronto Marlies and Toronto Maple Leafs. The team was going to be younger than ever as the Maple Leafs parked their youngest prospects with the Solar Bears to develop and gain experience.
It meant there would be a season of growing pains.
They have gone through periods where they won a lot of games and periods where they lost a lot of games. They have gone out on the road and picked up victories and come home to lay eggs.
There have been moments of utter frustration as the team learned how to adjust to a professional life — “Maybe I’m a different breed, but when you show up to the rink and you are uninspired and you are not excited to jump over the boards, you don’t make your teammates better, you don’t have energy, you don’t do something every time you are on the ice, maybe time shave changed, but I don’t understand it,” coach Anthony Noreen said after a loss to South Carolina in late November, that was the final night in a five-game losing streak and in the midst of getting only seven points in 15 games from Nov. 21 to the end of December. And then there have been moments of utter jubilation.
Even in the last month Orlando has been both frustrating and encouraging.
The Solar Bears picked up just 15 points in 15 games spent mostly at home in February (only one road game, a win against the Florida Everblades) and then went on the road to record 10 points in six games.
And all that was followed up in a sluggish early effort against the Adirondack Thunder on home ice.
That inconsistency has been very much the story of the season.
The Solar Bears have had to learn to play a different way in many respects. They have had to learn how to play with little practice time. They have had to learn how to make adjustments solely from watching video and make the most of their time on the ice.
That has even been something rookie coach Anthony Noreen has had to learn to be better at.
“We’ve got to be better teachers, number one, that starts with us,” Noreen said early in the season. “We’ve got to find a way to teach it better. In pro hockey, I’m finding you aren’t going to get to practice everything. That’s the life. You’ve got to learn through video, pay attention to the details. Every chance we gave up, every goal we gave up was a detail within our game that’s fixable. You’ve got to buy in and learn it, but they are all fixable.”
The Solar Bears have certainly gotten better. Players have shuttled between Orlando and Toronto at various points of the season giving Noreen something new to balance. But the roster has been largely stable of late. That has helped the Solar Bears get back into the Playoff race.
There are still things that are not particularly clean though. The team continues to struggle maintaining momentum, particularly at home where the team has the third best attendance in the league.
The Solar Bears will be attempting to “Pack the Den” on Saturday, opening up the upper bowl for the first time in hopes of attracting more than 11,000 fans to the Amway Center. They will want a better showing than what the team gave in its first game back home after a two-week-long road trip.
The last thing the Solar Bears have left to learn this year is what it is like playing in a Playoff atmosphere. A loss like Thursday’s 6-2 defeat to the Adirondack Thunder is a disappointing one, but not one without a lesson for a young team.
“I think we need to learn from it,” Noreen said. “These are playoff games. Some of the older guys are in there talking right now saying there is nothing worse than not being in the Playoffs. When other guys are playing for two months and you are sitting at home. We want to be playing. We want to keep this group together as long as possible. We have played seven really good games in a row. We rarely had a period off in those seven games where we weren’t ourselves. There is going to be nights we just don’t have it. OK is not good enough, we’ll be better on Saturday.”
It has not been a straight road for Orlando. Not in the least.
The Solar Bears have gone through plenty of ups and downs this season. There has been plenty of adversity. But also plenty of growth.
Whether the team can grow enough to get back to the Playoffs for a third consecutive year is another matter. In any case the Solar Bears have gotten a strong bite of professional life with all of its benefits and challenges.
