Now that the dust has settled a bit
I wanted to follow up with a quick game recap of the St. Lawrence game
yesterday. I guess the first thing I should mention is that we lucked out
with the weather, it was sunny and in the mid 70's throughout the
game. Within an hour of the game wrapping up we had ourselves quite
a storm which ended up knocking out power in the area.
After watching St. Lawrence play
Nazareth the other day, we knew we'd have our hands full with these guys.
They have a dominant face off specialist who can put the ball wherever he
wants, the Player of the Year in their conference in the midfield and an
excellent attackman. They also have a few
defensemen who can put the ball on the ground as well as a pretty good goalie
between the pipes. Early on they controlled the pace of the game,
had long possessions and had some good looks at the cage. On the other
hand we had some very quick possessions and their goalie made a few saves early.
Before you knew it we were down 3-0.
The good news is that I don't think
there was a single person on our sideline or on the field who had a sense
of panic. We've been down at some point in most of our games this
year and we're used to having to scratch and claw our way back into a
game. We finally got ourselves on the board after a nice feed by
Skyler Hopkins to Matt Ferrer
on the crease in which Matt had to make a tough catch and buried it in the
low corner. The next goal came from junior Jack Masur
who ended up winning the game ball for his 3 goals on the day. I may have
written about Jack earlier in the year but he's a guy who has been tearing it
up in practice all season long. He's stuck behind both Tom Petty and
David Hild on the depth chart but I've been giving
him a few minutes here and there since the middle of the season. Jack may
be our best attackman in terms of getting to the
cage, he's pretty slippery and on all three of his goals he weaved his way
through the defense to get a shot from within 2 yards.
Dave Campbell had a good day facing
off by going 11 for 25, even though he was under 50%
he gave us enough possessions to be able to make a few runs. We also had
some good wing play from freshmen Matt Rayner and
Zach Dayno. This was the first game of the
year where we consistently put two poles up on the wing to be able to contest
the 50/50 balls off the draw and it turned out to be a good
strategy. Pete Britt also did a great job in the cage,
he made a bunch of solid saves and then stole a few which also allowed us to
keep some momentum going.
The other big story of this game was
our play in the 3rd quarter where we outscored them 7-0. At halftime
we talked about having to win the gb
battle for the rest of the game and also being able to handle the pressure St.
Lawrence was putting on us all over the field. SLU actually did a
nice job of contesting loose balls and pressing out on the defensive end, it took us a half to be able to take advantage of them
being so extended.
Now it's time to get ready for the
Cardinals for a third time. Let's just say I'm not the only one up here
who is excited to get another shot at them this year. It should be a
great one on Wednesday, stay tuned.