Niagara came at Union in a purple rage during the first few minutes of Friday’s non-league game. But the Dutchmen nicely weathered the Purple Eagles’ storm in their Achilles Rink opener. <\/p>\n
Flexing their offensive muscle, the Dutchmen scored three first-period goals, and received a good performance from freshman goalie Kris Mayotte in a 5-2 win. <\/p>\n
Even though the Dutchmen (1-1-1) took a 1-0 lead on Marc Neron’s goal 2:04 into the game, they were running around at times in their own zone, trying to stop the Purple Eagles’ pressure. <\/p>\n
“We had a lot of emotion going into this game,” Union coach Kevin Sneddon said. “It was the first home game for a lot of the younger players. Even our veteran players were a little bit antsy at the beginning. Niagara came at us with a lot of firepower in terms of their forecheck. Our defensemen had a tough time all night because they had a purple jersey in their face.” <\/p>\n
Mayotte, who made 30 saves, gave up a bad goal to Chris Sebastian at 5:09 of the first that tied the score, 1-1. Mayotte stopped Matt Ryan’s shot, but couldn’t control the rebound. Sebastian put it home. <\/p>\n
“It was a weak shot from the point,” Mayotte said. “I had it. I tracked it in my glove, and it just hit the solid part of my glove and hopped out.” <\/p>\n
Shortly after that goal, the Dutchmen took control of the game. Scott Seney broke the tie with a power-play goal at 9:33. Kris Goodjohn, who had three assists, sent the puck to Chris DiStefano at the right point. DiStefano made a diagonal pass to Seney, who got behind the Niagara defense at the left of the net. Seney redirected the puck past goalie Rob Bonk. <\/p>\n
“It gave us the lead and let us relax a little bit,” Goodjohn said. <\/p>\n
Chris Konnick gave Union a two-goal lead just over four minutes later when he put the rebound of his own shot past Bonk. Brian Kerr made it 4-1, 3:50 into the second period when he fired home a wrist shot from the left circle. <\/p>\n
Niagara (2-3) cut Union’s lead to 4-2 when Ryan scored with 7:02 left in the third period.<\/p>\n
In the past, the Dutchmen might have panicked and start to do too much. But they maintained their composure and regained their three-goal lead 1:20 later when Joel Beal forced Bonk to turn the puck over. Bonk was out of position when Nathan Gillies fired home his second goal of the season. <\/p>\n
“Our team is calm and relaxed,” Gillies said. “It all comes down to having fun.” <\/p>\n
Ken Schott covers college hockey for The Daily Gazette in Schenectady, N.Y.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Niagara came at Union in a purple rage during the first few minutes of Friday’s non-league game. But the Dutchmen nicely weathered the Purple Eagles’ storm in their Achilles Rink opener. Flexing their offensive muscle, the Dutchmen scored three first-period goals, and received a good performance from freshman goalie Kris Mayotte in a 5-2 win. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":22374,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"coauthors":[],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp-admin.uscho.com\/recaps\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3480"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp-admin.uscho.com\/recaps\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp-admin.uscho.com\/recaps\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp-admin.uscho.com\/recaps\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp-admin.uscho.com\/recaps\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3480"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/wp-admin.uscho.com\/recaps\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3480\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp-admin.uscho.com\/recaps\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/22374"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp-admin.uscho.com\/recaps\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3480"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp-admin.uscho.com\/recaps\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3480"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp-admin.uscho.com\/recaps\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3480"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp-admin.uscho.com\/recaps\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=3480"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}