After Zamboni issues, Admirals complete win in empty Scope

Clash vs. Worcester is suspended Saturday with season-high crowd because of unsafe ice, finishes Sunday

The Norfolk Admirals’ latest victory will go down as their weirdest of the season and perhaps in franchise history.

It took two days, began with a season-high crowd of 5,710 at Scope and ended without any fans — thanks to two Zamboni machines that needed repair.

Representing Chesapeake with City Series jerseys, as they did throughout the weekend, the Admirals defeated the Worcester Railers 7-3 in an ECHL game that began Saturday night and ended Sunday afternoon, more than 21 hours after it started. That gave the Admirals a split of the two-game series.

Saturday, with the hosts leading 2-0 and neither Zamboni functioning properly, the game was suspended after one period because of unsafe ice. The Zamboni smoothes the ice, and competing amid so many skate marks from previous play eventually becomes dangerous.

Based on both teams’ schedules, resuming the game Sunday was the best option, but the resumption was closed to the public because there wasn’t enough time to get support staff, security and safety personnel in place.

The Admirals said fans who had tickets to Saturday’s game can exchange them for any remaining regular-season home game this season.

With the big crowd in place, Danny Katic scored the Admirals’ first goal 36 seconds after the opening faceoff. Nico Blachman

and Eric Williams picked up assists.

Darren McCormick had an unassisted goal with 2:07 left in the first to make it 2-0.

When the game resumed in an empty Scope, the Admirals surged. Brian Bowen, Todd Burgess and Griffin Lunn scored in the first 4:35 of the middle period for a 5-0 lead. But Worcester rallied, sandwiching two goals by Quin Ryan around a power-play goal by Anthony Repaci to trim the Admirals’ edge to 5-3 at the 12:40 mark of the second.

Neither team scored again until Stepan Timofeyev converted 12:09 into the third period. Burgess added his second goal of the day at 17:01 to close the scoring.

Goalie Tomas Vomacka made 29 saves for the victory. Brent Moran took the defeat for the Railers (25-22-3-0).

The Admirals (12-35-1-2), who have won five of their last 10 games after winning just seven of their first 40, next will hit the road for four games in five days.

They’ll face the Cincinnati Cyclones at 7:35 p.m. Wednesday before a Friday-Saturday-Sunday series against the Wheeling Nailers.