By Brittany Burke
A 7-1 win over the Boston College Eagles capped off a winning weekend Sunday night for the CCSU club hockey team.
Less than 10 days after tying the Eagles, whom were recently ranked the second best Division II team in the Northeast Collegiate Hockey Association behind William Paterson, the Blue Devils entered Sunday night’s match up playing physical and aggressive hockey.
“Obviously this game was different than our last game, which we tied them 3-3, but it was just a great team win. I mean, everyone contributed. You know, it just capped off a great weekend that these guys had,” said Head Coach Ben Adams.
CCSU took the lead half way through the period with a goal scored by Rob DiClemente with 10:17 left to play in the first. DiClemente took advantage of the Eagles on the power play with assistance from Thomas Carroll and Joe Dabkowski.
CCSU was presented with more scoring opportunities throughout the first such as the breakaway by Jonathan Knobloch, but were shut down by the BC goaltender, until there was under a minute left.
With 43.7 seconds left to play in the first CCSU struck again lengthening their lead to a two goal advantage entering the second period. The last minute goal came from Michael Joy assisted by Matt Williams.
The Blue Devils team played even better in the second, scoring four of their seven goals, while new goalie, Greg Coco continued to deny the BC players for the second period in a row. Two of the four second period goals were scored by newcomer Ryan Stanley, his first unassisted, and his second assisted by Carroll and Dabkowski.
Coco and Stanley are just two of the new key additions to the roster for the spring semester, which also includes veteran CCSU players Kevin Butler and Carmine Vetrano.
The additions leave the Blue Devils with the problem of choosing between three game-worthy goal tenders.
“It’s a good problem to have, having three starting goal tenders, and pretty much taking rotation until somebody steals something or gets hot. It’s a good problem and everyone plays for everybody,” said Coach Adams.
The team played Sunday’s game with conviction, skated well, and was able to keep a steady scoring rhythm throughout the entire game. The goals were spread out rather than coming in spurts, which has caused problems for them in the past, thanks in part to the cohesiveness of the new lines devised due to the new players.
“We made some changes, tried to hide our big guns throughout all the lines rather than just one line, and it’s frustrating a lot of teams because they can’t match up with us going four lines every game,” said Coach Adams.
With the new line ups in place the players began to click with one another. They were finding each other on the ice while making concise passes and saves in front of the net.
CCSU was playing smart hockey, protecting the puck, and making the clean hits that wouldn’t result in penalties.
The game was over when Eric Blewett capitalized on the power play after a BC player was given a five minute major for hitting from behind. Blewett was assisted by Carroll and Stanley.
Sunday’s win was the third win for the Blue Devils following the defeat of the University of New Hampshire on Friday and the win over Marist College on Saturday. Beating the third and fifth ranked teams respectively in the Northeast have put the Blue Devils on track for a run at the regionals at the end Feb. in Danbury, Conn.
“Central hockey hasn’t been this excited in a while. Guys are fired up. We had a huge weekend, we just tied them [BC], and had gotten pumped about that about two weeks ago,” said Dabkowski. “Then we came back and already beaten the number five and number three teams, and being number 10, you know, beating those two teams really helped the rankings. Then coming out and putting on a show like this, everyone is pretty excited.”
CCSU won’t be back at Newington until Feb. 6 against Bryant College.
