WHEELING — The Wheeling Nailers saw a promising season come to an abrupt halt Saturday night as the Norfolk Admirals navigated their way to a 5-2 victory in Game 5 of the ECHL’s Eastern Conference North Division semifinal series before a crowd of 2,095 inside WesBanco Arena.

With the win, Norfolk advances to the North Division Finals against Trois-Rivieres, while Wheeling is left to wonder what could have been after a good regular season.

Saturday night’s fireworks started before the puck even hit the ice as Wheeling’s Cole Tymkin and Phip Waugh and Norfolk’s German Yavash and Darick Louis-Jean dropped the gloves. Each was assessed two minutes for roughing.

However, the Nailers quickly found themselves with four players in the ‘sin bin’ after Chase Pietila and Louis Roehl were sent off for roughing and boarding minors, respectively, in a 21-second span.

It didn’t take long for the Admirals to take a 1-0 lead as Denis Smirnov lifted his own rebound over top of a sprawling Wheeling goaltender Taylor Gauthier who had denied Smirnov’s first attempt, but the rebound trickled to the right circle to Smirnov for the power-play tally at 3:07.

The early penalties were something that displeased Wheeling head coach Derek Army.

“This wasn’t how we envisioned the game going,” Army stressed. “For me, I was disappointed with the officiating. I thought, as a whole, from the series to go from one power play (for us) to five (for them) yesterday (Friday night) and then to come out tonight and have the soft call against us right away that put us down two players. Then they decided to not call anything and that impacted the game. You saw where officiating can take control of the game and right away they put us on our heels.

“That’s not what you expect from officiating at any level, so that was really disappointing. It took what really should have been an exciting game in an amped up building and team, and they took the wind right out of our sails,” he added. “I truly was disappointed. I think the league should be looking into how that was handled.”

Norfolk grabbed a 2-0 lead 53 seconds after the first goal when Brandon Osmundson poked a loose puck past Gauthier.

Five minutes later, Wheeling sliced the deficit in half when David Jankowski finished off a perfect pass from Pietila from the left doorstep. Pietila sailed down the right wing before sending the puck into the crease where Jankowski tapped it past goaltender Domenic DiVincentils to make it 2-1 with just over 10 minutes left in the opening period.

Neither team was able to muster any goals in the middle period but Norfolk struck again early in the third period when Colton Young wristed the puck past Gauthier’s glove hand on a breakaway for a 3-1 advantage.

Jack Beck pulled the Nailers back to within 3-2 when he banged home a rebound of a Gabe Klassen shot, but Young collected his second lamp-lighter and Darick Louis-Jean capped the scoring with an empty-netter.

Gauthier, who made the trip to Wheeling from Lehigh Valley, Pa., after Wilkes-Barre/Scranton was eliminated from the AHL Calder Cup playoffs the night before, stopped 21 of 25 shots. DiVincentils made 29 saves while giving Thomas Milic a break between the pipes.