Following last night’s pre-season 4-3 victory on the road against the Rockford IceHogs things shifted back to the MSOE Kern Center this afternoon. Today was mainly a “Skills” day with Scott Nichol, the Nashville Predators Director of Player Development, running point. It was a good session between the Admirals two pre-season contests. The Admirals will host the Chicago Wolves at the UW-Milwaukee Panther Arena at 6:00 PM CST tomorrow night.

To continue dialogue last night: that opening pre-season game felt eerily similar to the Admirals of last season. They had the great start. They managed to get out in front. Then the second period happened and everything fell flat. The IceHogs outshot the Admirals 18-9 in the second period alone. And what was a 2-0 Admirals lead suddenly became a 3-2 IceHogs advantage. Finally, to round it off, the Admirals refocused and found a way to win in the third period. It’s games like that in which I coined last year’s group “The Cardiac Kids” after late game heroics.

At day’s end. It is an exhibition game. There isn’t a real harsh penalty to hang over anyone’s head for a bad night or more so an end result. But it helps when you do succeed both individually and as a team. The most important element I saw in last night’s effort was the Admirals rolling out their predominantly B-Team and still having an ability to find a way to win the game. That’s a great thing to see and it was done in the third period from guys competing to earn their way into the AHL squad. If that’s the B-Team? The A-Team with Trevor Smith as the Admirals Colonel John “Hannibal” Smith out to follow in a like-minded pattern.

After practice wrapped up we had the chance to speak with Milwaukee Admirals head coach Dean Evason as well as Frédéric Allard, Matt O’Connor, Jake Paterson, and Cody Bass. That meant getting to the bottom of Allard’s unusual pre-game routine last night in Rockford and finding out from Paterson the story of how #DabbingPatty became a thing.

Who are you looking forward to seeing the most tomorrow night when hockey returns to the UW-Milwaukee Panther Arena? If it’s Anders Lindbäck: you’re in luck because he will be starting and playing the entire contest.

Be sure to keep updated with Admirals Roundtable through social media platform of your choice: follow along on Twitter, like us on Facebook, get photo updates on Instagram, and listen along on SoundCloud.