George Díaz: Solar Bears prepare for new season, rivalry.
Orlando preps for daunting rivalry as ECHL season begins
To paraphrase my hippie friends from the 1970s, it’s cool to make love, not war.
But what if conflict was actually the more enticing option? The ECHL’s Orlando Solar Bears and the Florida Everblades certainly have the blood, broken noses and missing teeth to prove that point.
Although the Solar Bears’ season begins at the Jacksonville Icemen on Saturday, the date to remember is Nov. 1 when the Everblades — based on the outskirts of Fort Myers — come to town.
Think of this as Superman vs. Lex Luthor slugging out, literally. It won’t be a battle for world domination, but a slice of mid-level professional ice hockey will suffice.
Their contempt for each other is etched by sharing many minutes on the ice as in-state rivals, including an infamous moment in April at the Amway Center.
The teams combined for 32 penalties and 182 penalty min-
utes in Game 4 of the ECHL Kelly Cup playoffs, a melee that drew attention nationally and included an ESPN SportsCenter shout-out.
The matchup wound up becoming even more painful for the Solar Bears, who blew a 3-1 series lead against the Everblades. Not that there’s any bad blood that spilled over into this season … #WinkWink.
“It comes down to playing each other so much,” forward Joe Perry said. “You learn to hate a team when you play them that much, plain and simple. I think we played them more than 20 times last year. It’s really hard not to get a hate for those guys.”
There’s a learning curve here as well for the majority of Solar Bears, an ECHL affiliate of the Toronto Maple Leafs. Perry and forward Chris Crane are the only two returning players on the 25-man roster.
It’s the norm for all the teams in the ECHL, a developmental league. But it’s also a distinctive dynamic for any sports franchise at any level. Nobody has that much turnover.
So the new guys have to get adjusted to each other as well as get up to speed on the “hate the Everblades” thing.
The franchise will accommodate those needs as quickly as possible, amping up the fan base with players wearing Orlando Magic-themed uniforms on Nov. 4 when they again host the Everblades.
Those uniforms will include the original Magic pinstripe design and reflect the first cross-marketing promotion after the Magic added to the team’s portfolio of properties by acquiring the Solar Bears during the summer.
Maybe the Solar Bears can take it a step further by evoking the spirit of “Shaq Fu,” a fighting game released in 1994 featuring Shaquille O’Neal. Hey, if it helps sell tickets and ratchets up the animosity, why not?
I brought up the concept of “familiarity breeds contempt” to coach Drake Berehowsky on Thursday morning, and he warmed up to it immediately.
“I’m stealing that,” he said. “… It’s a battle in Florida. They always have a good team. We always have a good team. We play each other a ton, so it’s easy to get animosity toward certain players and the players feel that and sometimes emotions get the best of you.”
To review that epic moment from last April, Florida's Mitchell Heard and Orlando's Mason Marchment started the contentious affair at center ice, but everything escalated after that with a bunch of other players starting their own scrums.
"A full scale line brawl has developed!" the TV commentator screamed as bodies and pieces of equipment flew on the ice and even the goalies got into the mix.
“It’s a here-we-go-again type of thing,” Perry said.
So Nov. 1 and 4 it is. We can promise lively hockey. We can surmise that there could be plenty more of the other stuff.
Sorry, hippies. The summer of love is so yesterday, baby.