By Brittany Burke
Headed into the semester break, the CCSU men’s ice hockey club currently rides a five-game winning streak which began on the road against third ranked Montclair.
Following a loss at Boston College, the CCSU Blue Devils took to the road again to defeat the higher ranked Red Hawks in New Jersey. The 6-1 pummeling gave the Blue Devils the momentum, which carried through to their final home game of the fall semester.
CCSU managed to win both at home and on the road following their previous weekend split. The first win for the Blue Devils came from the lower seeded Endicott College.
“It was an interesting game in that I think some people underestimated Endicott,” said Head Coach Ben Adams. “ … I’ve got to give credit to the guys. They gutted it out, it was not pretty. It was an ugly win, but a win is still a win no matter how it shakes out and the guys battled all the way through.”
Despite their lower ranking, Endicott put up a fight and CCSU barely scraped out a win in overtime with the Blue Devils netting five goals to the Gulls’ four.
CCSU’s leading goal scorer, Jon Knobloch led the team with three goals against Endicott, which gave him his second hat trick of the season. Knobloch enters the break second in team scoring with 36 points in 20 games, trailing Ryan Stanley who has 44 points in 20 games.
Once again the Blue Devils were faced to pull out the win in an overtime situation.
“[The game] felt like the beginning of the season when we [went into overtime] all the time, but it was good,” said Knobloch. “Everybody was just working hard. We let them tie it up, but I feel like we dominated the game, so we kind of had the edge there. Then we had the power play which we couldn’t capitalize on but it ended up working out with round three.”
Headed into the third period CCSU had the one goal advantage, but two last period goals made by Endicott helped tie the game at four.
While Tim Dillon netted the team’s fourth regulation goal, it wasn’t enough to secure the win outright. With matching penalties issued with 2:34 left to play, CCSU brought the game down to its final minutes.
Twenty-nine seconds into the penalty Knobloch ended it all with his third and final goal of the night.
It was CCSU who struck first on the powerplay with 7:31 left to play in the first period. While the first half of the period remained quiet, the second half resulted in four goals, two per team.
Following Knobloch’s first goal from Stanley, Endicott managed two quick goals of their own, however with five seconds left Conor Stanley fought through net traffic and sank the team’s second goal to tie up the game.
Blue Devil goalie John Palmieri shut out the Gulls in the second, while Knobloch increased his team’s lead by with a corner tap in off the rebound.
Palmieri, the rookie goalie, saved 38 of the 42 shots made on goal to help keep his team in the game.
With top goalie, Greg Coco out indefinitely due to an injury suffered against Montclair State on the road, Palmieri and Ross Mocko will be splitting time between the pipes.
“Palmieri is a good goalie,” said Adams. “We have three very good goaltenders and with Coco on the shelf for a little while these other two really need to step up. Their playing time is obviously gonna get increased and they have to make the best of it.”
Riding their second straight win, the Blue Devils headed to Danbury to take on the Western Connecticut Colonials. The in-state rivalry has a history of getting chippy and this road game was no different.
“It’s a Super East game and there’s no team that’s just gonna roll over for us, regardless of what we’ve done in the past,” said Adams. “Western, they’ve got some good coaches. They play well and you never know what team’s gonna show up, and every time they play us their better team shows up. So it was good to gut it out face some adversity again, late and we were able to battle through.”
With the rivalry on the line, CCSU pulled out its second win of the weekend and third in a row by topping the Colonials 5-3.
A fight early on in the game resulted in Dillon and Zack Vidmosko getting sent to the box alongside Western’s Philip Seperack and Jared Wentworth.
Offensively, Western outshot the Blue Devils in the first. Early on CCSU fell to the Colonials 12 shots to three, but was able to pick things up as the period wore on.
“The first period is tough. We kind of played into the game Western wanted us to play and we got away from what works for us, which a couple penalties gets us into trouble and we can’t roll the four lines and we have a hard time getting into our groove,” said Adams. “I thought once we passed that we did a pretty god job of rolling some lines and getting some offense and generating some scoring opportunities and dictating some play, which is what we’re based off of.”
With the shots even at 14 a piece, it was CCSU who made the first move in the following period with a goal made by Nick Centore from Sean Stoneman with 15:05 left to play in the second.
The Blue Devils’ lead didn’t last long due to an unassisted goal made by Western’s Jack DaMota. The teams continued to swap goals and entered the second intermission tied at two.
Each team managed to capitalize on the other’s mistakes. With CCSU racking up 20 minutes in penalties, the Colonials were able to net two goals on the power play. While Western got two off the man advantage, CCSU scored three of its five goals with a Western player in the box.
Knobloch once again proved to be an offensive powerhouse netting a goal 27 seconds into the third. Less than four minutes later C. Stanley followed suit, unassisted, to give the Blue Devils the two goal lead.
CCSU’s offensive quick fire was countered by the Colonials who cut the deficit in half with 14:39 to play in the game.
While CCSU might have been overpowered early in the game it was the Blue Devils who dominated in the last 20 minutes.
With Western’s Colin Neugold in the box for boarding, team president, Evan Mink found the back of the net with 2:03 left to play.
“They don’t happen a lot but sometimes they find their way into the back of the net and that’s a good thing,” said Mink.
Mink’s goal finished off the Colonials, who fell to the Blue Devils for the second time this season, with shots on goal 47 to 29 in favor of CCSU.
The Blue Devils were once again able to ride the winning momentum into the following weekend, which also resulted in two defeats, this time both on the road.
With Palmieri in net both games; CCSU took down both UMass and Bryant with six goals.
While CCSU tripled the goals against UMass they were forced into overtime for the tenth time against Bryant. The 6-5 defeat gave the Blue Devils’ their ninth overtime win headed into break.
The break will allow for the athletes to step away from the rink, while also giving them time to work on some weaknesses that are still present in their game.
“I definitely think it’s gonna be a good break,” said R. Stanely. “People get away from hockey a little bit and then refocus up … I know some guys are gonna be skating, working out over the winter break.
“[We] definitely work on stamina,” he said. “I felt like we stay out there a little too long on our shifts, guys get a little too tired and also defensive zone, we’re running around looking at the puck rather than picking up a man and sticking with him, hittin’ and pinnin’ .If we can correct our d-zone that’ll help us because d-zone translates into offense.”
Due to the school’s winter recess the CCSU team will get a break away from the ice. The Blue Devils return back to action on Jan. 14 at Newington in a rematch against Montclair State.
