February 15, 2009

The last two home games of the season against two good club from the other division - Friday against SS both teams played well early on but SS got on the board first at 5:42 to grab the early lead - both teams had solid chances before we capitalized on a PP at 12:49 to tie it up, Vitale scoring after some nice passing from Amico and Story - play remained even for the rest of the period - SS scored early in the second at 2:06 to grab the lead again and despite numerous chances at both ends here was no more scoring in the period - the pace was fairly even until at 7:16 SS scores a PP goal to take a two goal lead which is stating to look quite large to say the least - we do however start to play even better, get another PP goal at 11:40, Resor from Derosa and Cooper to cut the lead to one - 2 1/2 minutes later that line remains hot and tie it up at 14:29 Derosa from Resor ----- now things are getting dicey - both teams take some ill advised penalties but neither can score - with 30 seconds to go SS takes a penalty - we get control, keep the puck deep in their zone, get a couple of face-offs when Derosa slides the puck past the goalie as 0:00 showed on the clock - the refs allowed the goal (I think they tried to go to Toronto for a replay) then discussed it for at least 5 minutes with no evidence to overturn the call and finally confirmed that it was good - officially it went in at 19:59.9 - actually the buzzer never went off even though 0:00 was on the clock - a big win in this battle to grab a playoff spot

Saturday afternoon Southern Maine visited, another good team with a slightly better record than ours and like SS in the battle for home ice in the other division playoffs - before we could blink Resor popped in an unassisted goal at 0:09 off some poor SM work down deep - we however cannot stand prosperity, immediately take two penalties and SM ties it up at 6:48 - SM then reciprocated and we got a PP goal from Connor Pieri, his first, at 8:59 - play is starting to get a little chippy, too say the least, we go back on the PP but give up a shorthanded goal at 11:25, something that has been bugging us a little, but we come back with Vitale leading the way to go ahead at 16:40, Clark assisted - no more scoring this period, 5 is plenty ----- in the second play remains tough both ways - we go on the PP fairly early and go up 4-2 Wilson from Cooper and Derosa - we don't celebrate long - 14 seconds later the lead is cut to one and 5 minutes later it is all even - from here on in the play gets very physical, the refs frankly seem unable to maintain any consistency in their calls and that always leads to problems ---- the third starts off torrid, Cooper scores from Derosa to put us up by one, SS ties it up at 6:13 and the shot count is going up fast at both ends with a flurry of the usual penalties - no one can score, Barchard and our defense play well, and we head into overtime ---- OT almost seemed mild compared to the pace and special team play of the first 60 minutes - that is how it ended 5-5

For the weekend getting three points is huge - se the standings below - we can clinch the last playoff spot with some points over the weekend - the team is playing with a high degree of intensity and some confidence to boot - the games are at UMass Boston Friday at 7 and Babson Saturday at 4

Amherst 14-2-1
Middlebury 13-3-1
Williams 12-3-2
Trinity 12-5
Conn Col 8-6-3
Bowdoin 7-8-2
Hamilton 7-12
Tufts 5-10-2 (overall 9-11-2)
Wesleyan 4-13-1
Colby 3-12-2

top 10 scorers
Derosa 25
Resor 22
Cooper 18
Story 10
Wilson 9
Davis 9
Amico 9
Walker 7
Clark 6
Korchin 5


[Return to Coach Sands' Updates Index]