Iona’s 5-3 victory over Fairfield wasn’t easy and it wasn’t pretty, but Gaels coach Frank Bretti was pleased nonetheless — especially when taking into consideration the circumstances surrounding the win.
“I was proud of our guys considering the amount of players that were out of the lineup due to team reasons. We responded well to a difficult challenge, an even more difficult challenge considering the amount of guys out of the lineup. We needed to refocus in certain respects,” Bretti said.
Despite the loss, Fairfield coach Jim Hunt was also pleased with his team’s effort. “I was happy with the overall effort. I thought it was a pretty evenly played game with the exception of some special teams advantages that they had.”
As a result of the benchings (Jean-Paul Chaput, Michael LoCicero, Kelly Bararuk and Brent Williams) and assorted injuries (Trevor McCall and Kris Swinney), Bretti had only 15 skaters available for Friday night’s game at the Wonderland of Ice.
The Gaels jumped out to the early lead less than five minutes into the first period as they took advantage of some traffic in front of Stags goaltender Michael Wolfe. Fairfield’s freshman netminder steered Ryan Carter’s shot into the corner. As Carter chased the rebound down in the right wing corner, Wolfe was bumped just enough for him to be unable to recover to stop Nathan Lutz’s deflection from the top of the crease.
Lutz was well aware of just how important getting the two points was. “We came off a couple of big losses last weekend [at Mercyhurst] and we had a tough week of practice just trying to get back to the basics. We knew Fairfield would come out hard, but we came out hard and got a good game out of everybody. It’s a big win for us.”
Fairfield answered with a power-play goal late in the first period just after having a Rae Metz goal disallowed because he struck the puck with a high stick. However, Metz and Dan Cotter helped set up Ryan Tormey whose rebound attempt beat a sprawling Scott Galenza at 14:38.
Just as the crowd was settling into their seats for the start of the second period, the Stags struck at the 0:26 mark to take a 2-1 lead. Metz started the play when he picked up a loose puck at the Fairfield blue line. As a result, an Iona odd-man rush then turned into a two-on-one for Fairfield as Cotter redirected home Metz’s pass for the first of his two goals.
Iona drew even about 11 minutes later as Tim Krueckl and Ryan Manitowich worked the puck down low and set up John Gilbert, who was left alone in the slot for a shot that just squeezed between Wolfe’s pads.
Less than two minutes later, Iona took the lead for good on a play that turned out to be a key point in the game. Wolfe came out of his net to the high slot to try and chase down a loose puck. However, Lutz beat him to the puck and calmly slid the puck into the open net as a Fairfield player threw his stick in a desperate attempt to prevent a certain goal.
When Wolfe came flying out of his net to play the puck, he ended up losing his helmet and hitting his head on the ice. After a few minutes, a groggy Wolfe was helped off the ice. After the game, he was taken to the hospital.
Hunt realized just how important Wolfe’s injury was. “Obviously, the turning point was when the goaltender got run and got taken out of the game. Any time you have a situation like that it changes the momentum of the game.
With Wolfe out of the game, freshman Andrew Martin stepped in and stopped all three shots he faced in the second period.
Iona received a golden opportunity to widen its lead early in the third period as Fairfield took a pair of bad penalties that left Iona with a five-on-three advantage for 1:15. First, Fairfield was assessed a bench minor when Hunt was arguing about an Iona line change. The second penalty was a high-sticking minor to Martin.
Martin managed to keep the Gaels off the board until their were 21 seconds remaining on the five-on-four portion of the power play as Erik Nates tipped home a Lutz wrist shot from the right point to make the score 4-2.
Iona’s two-goal lead lasted all of 35 seconds before Fairfield connected on a home-run pass as Cotter broke loose behind the Gaels defense and beat Galenza with a shot from the left wing circle. That goal exemplifies Hunt’s philosophy of coaching.
“Since I got here, I have tried to instill in the whole team that we have a five-man offense and a five-man defense. So when we have the puck, all five guys are thinking offense and all five guys are thinking defense without [the puck].”
Thirty seconds after cutting the lead to 4-3, Fairfield had a couple of big-time scoring chances that were turned aside by Galenza. “I thought Scott made some key saves considering the havoc that was being presented with some of the shots,” Bretti said.
Iona finished off the scoring as Carter, Krueckl, and Manitowich broke out on a three-on-two. A couple of quick passes later, Krueckl made it 5-3 as he converted a deflection of a Carter touch pass.
Iona (10-11-2, 9-6-2 MAAC) and Fairfield (4-17-2, 2-13-2 MAAC) finish their home-and-home series tonight with a 7:30 p.m. game at the Skate Nation Arena in New Rochelle, NY.
