By Brittany Burke
The CCSU club hockey team played its third game in as many days against the University of Connecticut and, for the third straight game, the team was forced into an overtime situation, ending in a 4-4 tie.
“[The team] doesn’t want to lose and regardless of the score, they play hard and that’s a testament to the last two games,” said Head Coach Ben Adams. “Tonight I think we made too many mental mistakes and we stopped doing what was working for us and fully let [UConn] back into the game and they had a slow start and they ended up finding their magic.”
Coming off a home loss in extra minutes against New York University on Saturday night, the Blue Devils traveled to Freitas Ice Forum at UConn to try and get its first win of the weekend.
CCSU got the early advantage in the first with a goal from Conor Stanley and just two minutes later the initial deficit grew to two due to a shot taken by Jon Knobloch with 11:38 to play until the first intermission.
Knobloch led the team in goals against the Huskies, notching three goals for the hat trick, and a total of four points.
“It feels great you know especially so early in the season it’s good to get the goals off your back,” said Knobloch. “It’s a good feeling, but we played a tough game. We played good the first two periods then kind of fell apart a little bit and they came back we’re no strangers to overtime this year.”
His second goal of the night, and first shorthanded goal came 18 minutes into the game while Ryan Stanley served two minutes in the box.
Goalie Greg Coco managed to keep UConn off the board for the first 32 minutes while CCSU catapulted to a 4-0 lead. Coco finished the 65-minutes with 32 saves for 36 shots.
While the Huskies allowed for the Blue Devils to score four unanswered points, the home team kept fighting and eventually began to close the gap. Beginning with the late second period goal, the Huskies went on to tie the game with three third period goals.
“Blowing a four goal lead is never acceptable,” said Adams. “In this game that overtime was tough, we should have finished that game off with a W in regulation, as far as the other overtimes [on Friday and Saturday] they were hard earned.”
The final goal for the Huskies came with under three minutes to play in the game and while CCSU kept the puck moving, neither team managed to bury the puck, forcing the five-minute sudden death overtime.
“I think our guys just have to do a little bit better at settling down and blocking shots,” said Adams. “When they have opportunities to get pucks out they have to get them out there, can’t be an excuse as to why it didn’t and these kids are going to have to look within themselves and figure out that no team is going to just rollover and no team is gonna stop coming and give you a lane and they’re going to have to figure out what you need to get it done.”
The extra five minutes came and went with both teams still at four each. Since the league doesn’t go beyond the extra minutes the score remained and the Blue Devils ended the weekend where it had begun, in a tie.
“We basically played an extra period this weekend with all the overtimes,” said Knobloch. “We just got to learn to just close it out I think eventually we’ll get there, it’s still early in the season so it’s not a time to panic.”
The Blue Devils have now played five games, with four of the five going into extra minutes. CCSU will see action again on Saturday Oct. 22 at 9 p.m. to take on the Boston College club team.
