By Brittany Burke

Unlike last weekend, there were no overtime situations for the CCSU club hockey team. Instead, the team took the ice at the Newington Arena to face the Boston College club hockey team, and suffered a 10-3 regulation loss.

On Friday night the team traveled to New Haven to play the Yale University club team, and handily won 15-1. It was apparent in the first period that the Bulldog team was no match for the Blue Devils, but such a dominant win hindered CCSU entering Saturday night’s game against the Eagles.

“It’s very had to play a quality team after the team we played [Friday] night,” said Head Coach Ben Adams. “I think we were over confident, I think we got away from doing a lot of the little things that needed to be done to win quality games and we just kind of developed some bad habits over night. You know we were doing some things right, but the fundamentals once we turned the puck over just weren’t there tonight.”

When both teams took to the ice for warm-ups, it was visible that Boston College had the clear size advantage over CCSU. As the puck dropped and the game began, it was the CCSU athletes who used physicality to their advantage, but that didn’t last.

CCSU’s Jack Johnson took an early first period penalty and BC scored with 10:20 left to play in the opening period. The initial time spent in the box was the single penalty against CCSU in the first period, which is something that the team has had to work on.

The team only took about 12 minutes in penalties against the Eagles but go-to scorer, Matt Siracusa, was given the gate with 4:40 to play in the second period.

“I’d have to look at the sheet, but I don’t really remember our penalties hurting us,” said Adams. “They’ve definitely gotten better, [the guys are] definitely working harder. The penalties we were taking at the beginning of the year were just straight up lazy penalties and now the penalties that we’re taking are, I don’t want to say that they’re good penalties, but they’re because they are battling, which is a lot more acceptable.”

BC took the early advantage, but a shot made by Andrew Mazurkiewicz cut the deficit in half, but the Eagles countered with a third goal to end the period. Despite the late goal, BC continued to dominate the Blue Devils in the second period, this time with two stick-side goals that put the Eagles ahead by four.

CCSU’s power play comprised of Ryan and Conor Stanley, Evan Mink, Kevin Paglinco and Jon Knobloch was able to capitalize on a BC goal to up the score 5-2, still in favor of the Eagles.

No matter what the Blue Devils tried to do to gain momentum, the Eagles would counter with a goal of its own. The biggest change up for CCSU came at the beginning of the third period when starting goalie, Greg Coco was pulled in favor of Ross Mocko.

The switch in goaltenders didn’t help. Just 46 seconds into the third, the Eagles shot the puck past Mocko for their seventh point of the game.

“I did not pull Coco because of any poor play,” said Adams. “It was more or less to try and get a spark out of the team and Mocko just didn’t make some saves that he usually makes, which is why we were more than confident putting Mocko in. Whether he wasn’t ready to go or didn’t have enough time to focus, whatever it may be, saves he usually makes for us, it didn’t happen tonight. I can’t fault him because those guys had to go through five others to get that shot off first.”

CCSU managed to find a spark of energy, as Jon Knobloch scored his second goal of the game. They fought to the end, but it wasn’t enough as the Eagles continued to pile it on.

“I think you’re pretty much playing for pride once you’re down that low you don’t want them to keep pouring it on,” said Adams. The score does matter, it matters a small portion in the ranking in how bad off a loss or how good of a win that will play into the ranking so they have some motivation to keep playing.”

There are two more games before the first ranking period and if CCSU could win those games they could receive a good ranking. The team’s next home game will be Friday Oct. 28 at the Newington Arena before traveling to Endicott the following day.