By Brittany Burke
Despite dropping both home games this past weekend, the CCSU Club Hockey team still drew a loud and impressive crowd to the Newington Arena to watch them play against UConn and William Patterson.
With the stands littered with Blue Devil IRC pitchforks (thanks to the IRC skate that took place the same night), the fans shouted, egged on the WPU Pioneers and jeered the refs, all while keeping the CCSU spirit up as the Blue Devils fell 7-2.
“We gotta thank the fans too, they’re awesome,” said team veteran Greg Coco. “…I give them a lot of credit and they make us feel kind of important.”
The five point deficit doesn’t show the true story of how well Coco played in net against CCSU’s SECHL rivals. With the majority of the game played close to the goal’s crease, Coco saved 47 of the 54 shots taken against him, with a final save percentage of 87.
“I thought he played great,” said Head Coach Ben Adams. “That score is not indicative of the battle [and] those last three he was hung out to dry and the guys, I don’t want to say quit on him, but they weren’t battling as hard as they should be.”
WPU took the early lead, shutting out CCSU in the first period while gaining two goals of their own. CCSU answered back in the second with goals from Ross Burton and Rob Ribino getting the assists from Evan Mink, Conor Stanley, Brian Fay and Jack Johnson.
Toward the end of the period WPU notched a short-handed goal while CCSU couldn’t capitalize on the Pioneer penalties. As WPU came out more aggressive in the final period, the Blue Devils couldn’t keep up. A steady stream of goals put the visitors up by three with only three minutes left to play.
“I’ve just been trying to focus on watching the pucks and worrying about my angles because that’s pretty much all I can control at the end of the day. I think until the end of the third period I hadn’t given up an even strength goal in the last two and a half games, so that’s frustrating,” said Coco.
One thing CCSU doesn’t lack is emotion for the game. However, over the course of the season they’ve let those emotions get the best of them and get them sent into the penalty box. That pattern showed again as two late penalties by Andrew Mazurkiewicz and Johnson gave the Pioneers a final opportunity to score.
The last two goals were scored by the Pioneers with 45 and seven seconds left.
“We fell short in the third, but it’s more mental mistakes than physical mistakes,” said Adams. “We did okay breaking pucks out, I thought we did too much with the pucks at time, the support wasn’t always there, but it’s just those kind of mental break downs that hurt us and they don’t really hurt us that bad. It was technically a 4-2 score and then it fell apart.”
The team’s temper reared the night before in a 5-2 loss to its in-state rivals, the UConn Huskies.
With 1:48 left to play in the game a bad roughing call was made against Johnson, sending him to the box and eventually the locker room for the remainder of the game while UConn’s Ryan Doherty was given four minutes.
“The emotion shows that they have the heart there, which is good,” said Adams. “As far as the refing, they call what they call and it is what it is but we have to do a better job of controlling the emotion and playing hockey.”
UConn took more penalties than CCSU, but the Huskies managed 48 shot attempts on goal while the Blue Devils had 20 less.
It was CCSU who struck early with two goals from Burton and Johnson in the first, but they were kept off the board for the rest of the game as UConn tallied two in the second and three in the third.
“We looked pretty good in the first. We were blocking shots and Goose [Zach Gosselin] stood on his head to keep us in it and defense played really well tonight. In the second we had a little let down and in the third period we took too many penalties,” said Kevin San Angelo.
CCSU will play its final home game Feb. 9 against Siena at 9 p.m.
