Sorry this has taken a few
days to get out, just finished up getting ready for practice this afternoon and
wanted to send a quick note. As you all
know by now, we picked up two more wins over the weekend and feel extremely
fortunate to still be playing after our game on Sunday against the Mules.
On Friday the Ephs came to town knowing they were about to play their
last game of the season and certainly played like they had nothing to
lose. As I’ve been predicting all season
long they were healthy for our game after having two of their top 3 returning
scorers on the sideline for most of the year.
If these guys were healthy all year I don’t think they end up 1-8 in the
conference.
As for the game, they
jumped out to a quick 3-0 lead with a few goals coming in transition. We finally put a few in the back of the net
to pull within one at the end of the first but felt like we had let them off
the hook by only converting on 2 of 19 shots in the quarter! Fortunately the guys
starting burying some shots in the 2nd with David Hild
notching a few and Griff McGoldrick
letting one rip on a fast break from about 12 yards out. Williams would hang around through the 3rd
quarter due mainly to their exceptional face off specialist who won 16 of 23
draws on the day. We would see another
great face off guy on Sunday but I would have to give the nod to Corey Jacobs
from Williams as the best draw man we’ve seen all year.
In the fourth quarter we
were able to break an 8-8 tie by scoring three straight goals, the first came
in transition as Griff McGoldrick
stuck a lefty shot in transition. Then
Erich Pfeffer split lefty for a nice shot off hip
from 10 yards out and finally Darric White scored his
first career goal in transition off of a feed from Mike Giordano. Darric has put
himself in some great situations so far this year in transition so it was nice
for him to finally get one.
Going into Sunday we knew
we’d have our hands full as Colby’s Craig Bunker came into the day facing off
at 72% on the year and they had generated some nice looks on offense in the
first game. As it turned out, they continued
to generate great looks against us all day long but fortunately for us we have
the best goalie in the league and Ryan was able to steal the game for us.
We came out on fire as we
won the first six face offs of the game, took an early 4-0 lead, and seemed to
be playing at a different speed than the Mules.
We took 15 shots in the quarter and had a chance to take them completely
out of the game but their goalie made a few nice saves and we missed on a few
open looks. They finally got on the
board late in the first and from there on out they’d continue to claw their way
back into the game.
The two plays of the game
came in the middle of the field. The first being in a riding situation where Mike Giordano sprinted
back to the midline to deflect a pass that Billy Chapman scooped up and took to
the hoop. Billy has really
become a threat in transition and is playing with a tremendous amount of
confidence right now as he looked off both of our attackman
and stuck the shot from 8 yards himself!
The second play came on the opening face off in the 2nd overtime. We had stressed going into the game that we
needed a team effort on every face off and that’s exactly what we got for the
game winner. Bunker won the draw and had
the ball in his stick when Darric White put it back
on the ground. Now that there was
possession a Colby defender picked up the ball coming out of the restraining
box when Darric jumped him as well. As their kid was under pressure he decided to
go back to the goalie with the ball but Dave Hild had
sprinted over to intercept the pass and finished it on the doorstep for the
game winner.
We certainly dodged a
bullet as Colby had some good looks at the end of regulation and in OT but our
guys hung in there and finally made a play to win it. We had a great practice yesterday and will be
ready for the Bantams this Saturday down at Tufts. The first semifinal is Tufts vs. Bowdoin at
noon and our game is scheduled to start at 3pm. We played one of our best games of the year
in our first match up with Trinity and will need a similar effort to extend our
season on Saturday. We hope to see a few
of you there!