It was a tough weekend on the road at Hobart for Neumann, shutout on Friday and eking out a tie on Saturday.
The Statesmen took the play to Neumann early and often on Friday, scoring a pair of goals in both the first and second periods to take a 4-0 lead before the game was even half over. Neumann changed goaltenders after the fourth goal, inserting Ross MacKinnon, and that quieted things down, but the damage had been done and Hobart won the game 4-0.
“I think [Hobart] was pretty upset with how last weekend went for them,” said Neumann coach Dominick Dawes. “They came at us right away and buried their chances. We didn’t do a good job of getting to the net. Shots were pretty even, but they had better goal-scoring opportunities than we did.”
The Knights came out much better on Saturday, taking the play to Hobart and outshooting the Statesmen 16-5 in the first period. However, a trio of second period goals put Hobart ahead 4-2 at the end of forty minutes. William Lacasse scored a pair of goals in the third period to garner a tie and at least partially save the weekend for Neumann.
“Our guys were upset about Friday’s outcome and not being able to get anything done,” said Dawes. “I was happy with how we came out on Saturday. They stuck with it, battling through it, and salvaging a point.”
The official score sheet for Saturday only gave assists on one of the four Neumann goals. The overly stingy referees appear to have robbed points from a few Neumann players, as each of the last three Knights’ goals were scored off of faceoffs.
The three-point weekend narrowed the gap between Hobart and Neumann to only two points in the standings, as the teams battle for third place to escape the dreaded play-in game.
In the other league series, Utica took a huge step forward by sweeping Manhattanville, the first time the Pioneers have done that in the regular season since 2005.
The Pioneers began the weekend with a 2-1 victory at Manhattanville. The Valiants opened the scoring in the first period, but Utica’s special teams won the game. Jordan Hobaica tallied a short-hander in the second period to tie the game and then Steve Zappia put in a power-play goal in the third to win it.
Three different Pioneers goal scorers got on the score sheet in Saturday’s game at The Aud, one in each stanza, to take the game 3-1. For the second straight game, Utica scored a short-handed goal in the second period, this time by Trever Hertz.
The Utica sweep moves the Pioneers into a first place tie with Elmira and buries Manhattanville in fifth place, where the Pioneers will most likely finish the regular season.
In the final nonconference game of the season for the league, Elmira beat Cortland 6-4 on Saturday. The Soaring Eagles went 3-for-7 on the power play and outshot The Red Dragons 49-23. Cortland hung around though, and tied the game 4-4 just over five minutes into the third period. Rick Shrank scored a pair of power-play goals in the final nine minutes of the third period to give Elmira the win.
The ECAC West finished the season with a nonconference record of 46-10-9, including an impressive 28-9-5 against the SUNYAC.
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