By Brittany Burke
CCSU hockey couldn’t hold on to a first period lead, dropping Friday night’s match-up versus non-ACHA team, Bentley 5-3.
“I’ve got to give Bentley a lot of credit, they’re technically not an ACHA team but they’re trying to get recognized, and to their credit they play the better teams and sometimes they pull out some wins,” said Head Coach Ben Adams.
CCSU entered the weekend’s first game in Simsbury following a three-game road stint against looking for the team’s first outright win since opening night against Merrimack. The three game road trips resulted in ties against Endicott and the University of New Hampshire and a loss against powerhouse William Patterson.
Regardless of the need to win, CCSU took the ice for warm-ups defeated, which was noticeable through the entire 60 minutes.
“I think that we have the team to beat them,” Adams said. “I think mentally we beat ourselves the whole entire game starting from warm-ups. We had a great week of practice and I think that just them seeing the other team warmed up, mentally they beat themselves.”
The Blue Devils took the early advantage, leading the Falcons 3-1 with under 10 minutes to play in the second, but back-to-back goals had the game tied entering second intermission.
The third period was less productive for CCSU, as Bentley managed to score twice, while shutting the Blue Devils.
Down 4-3, after a Bentley power play goal, CCSU pulled second year goalie, Greg Coco for the man advantage. Unfortunately CCSU wasn’t able to capitalize on the opportunity, but Bentley was, placing the puck right between the empty pipes.
“We came out slow and we just never really got it going on mean Bentley’s a good team but I def think we could’ve come out with a better performance and we got to work on that,” said Ryan Stanley, one of CCSU’s stand out forwards.
Thirty-seven seconds into the third period players on both teams were called for facemasks in front of Coco. The matching penalties resulted in junior Matt Siracusa and Captain Thomas Carroll getting sent to the box. CCSU forward Evan Mink was inevitably tossed from the game and named ineligible for Saturday’s match against Towson after continually arguing with the ref while being escorted to the box.
The facemasks were just the beginning of the third period penalties for CCSU, which made it harder for the team to stage the needed comeback.
“It’s very hard to come from behind or take the lead from the box, it’s almost impossible,” said Adams. “We took some bad penalties, some selfish penalties and that’ll all be corrected in practice.”
Despite the loss, forwards Stanley and Jonathan Knobloch have emerged as offensive leaders. Skating on the same line, the combination was responsible for two of the three goals scored by CCSU.
CCSU took the early one goal advantage with 8:30 to play in the first period when Stanley scored a glove side goal off the assist from Knobloch. The Knobloch, Stanley one-two punch was proven effective again in the second, to give the Blue Devils the two goal lead with under ten to play.
“Well my first goal, Jon Knobs, he made a great pass to me and I just kind of slid it in so I’d have to give him the credit on that one, and the second one it was actually the same thing he drop passed it to me and I just shot it and it went in,” Stanley said. “We are kind of the veterans because we were here last year to make our run in nationals and we’re kind of looked as goal scorers on the team because you know we’ve been here and we understand our role and we just try to do it.”
It is evident that CCSU still has some voids to fill. They’ve lost the power players that made up the team’s four strong lines, which gave them the edge, but the team needs to finish burying the puck on top of defensive zone coverage.
“We’re mixing some lines up all the time trying to find the right combos, we haven’t found it yet, but were still working for it. Luckily [Jaime] Germaine scored for us giving our second line a little depth but we’re pretty much a one-dimensional team right now and that’s got to change.”
CCSU closed out the weekend in back-to-back games on the road against DI school Towson, and returns to Simsbury on Oct. 23 at 8 p.m. in a match up against CW Post followed by a game on Sunday Oct. 24 at 11:50 a.m. against Boston College.