The Panthers improved to 3-0 yesterday in front of a good midweek crowd on Kohn Field.  After being -5 the night before the temperature warmed up into the high 30's by game time. 

 

It seems that after all the success Wesleyan has had in the past few years by playing zone that it has caught on with some other programs.  Springfield played zone 90% of the time yesterday which allowed us to possess the ball and be in control of the game from start to finish. 

 

We got on the board first by scoring a man up goal a few minutes into the first quarter.  Senior Will Simpson (St. Alban's) scored his first goal of the season off of a nice feed from Matt Ferrer (Brunswick, CT).  Springfield's plan on man down was to shut off Jim Cabrera and play 5v4 with their 4 long poles.  Although this was the first time a team has done this to us this year, it's something we've been expecting and ended up scoring on 3 out of 6 chances on man up.  

 

Once again we controlled the face of x, both Pete Mellen and Dave Campbell (the player) have shown they are going to be two of the best face off men in the league.  Our wing play has also been excellent with junior Glenn Bickley (St. Alban's) and sophomore James Guay (Deerfield) both up on the wings for most face offs.  We've seen a few other teams play with 2 poles on the wings but there aren't many longsticks who can pick the ball up in traffic better than James and Glenn.

 

Defensively we had a better performance all around by our middies as well as our close defenseman.  The story of the day had to be the play of senior goalie Alex Palmisano.  He finished with 18 saves and as usual some of them he had no business making. Although it felt like we were in control of the game from start to finish, had Alex not played the way he did it could have easily been a 1 or 2 goal game. 

 

We're turning it around pretty quickly in order to get ready for Bowdoin on Saturday at 1pm.  They are coming off of a big win against St. Lawrence who has been playing very well so far this season.  It is shaping up to be another classic, I'll let you know how it goes....

 

As always, thanks for your support and keep in touch!

Dave