The Panthers came to play today and defeated the Polar Bears 15-5.  Once again we were fortunate to have a gorgeous sunny day with the temperature in the low 40's for most of the game.

Although we had our best offensive output of the season to date,  the story of the day was the play of our defense and Alex Palmisano in goal.  The defense held Bowdoin scoreless for the first 25 minutes of the game allowing us to build a comfortable lead and allowing our offense to work through some early mistakes.   The impressive part about the defensive effort once again involves some new faces stepping up to the plate.  With James Guay only being able to play for the first minute of the game due to injury we needed to move Glenn Bickley from LSM to close defense.  Going into the game we also started freshman Chris Mejia (Bullis School, DC) at close defense for the first time in his career. At long stick midfield we bumped senior John Sales (Deerfield, MA) into the starting role after only two days of practice and only 5 days removed from playing in the NCAA ice hockey national championship game!  John played a superb game, had some big hits for us and a nice assist on our first goal of the game.   That's not all though.  Finally, in his first action of the season freshman Charlie Schopp (Deerfield, MA) stepped in as our second long stick middie and played a terrific game. He ended up winning the game ball from his teammates for his role in today's victory.  What allowed all of these new faces to feel comfortable on the field and what gave them confidence was the play of Alex Palmisano in goal.  He didn't have to make a ton of saves today but the ones he did make were big ones and helped us keep momentum throughout the game.

Peter Mellen and Dave Campbell (the player) were also both instrumental in the win, after a few procedure calls by the officials that went Bowdoin's way early in the game, Pete and Dave dominated the face off x.  Both ended up with a goal and created a lot of unsettled opportunities for us throughout the game.

Offensively it was the first time since our opener that we were able to play against a man defense so it took us a few possessions to get back into our rhythm.  We were again patient at that end of the field and controlled the clock over the course of the game.  Our starting attack unit contributed 10 of our 15 goals and look to be getting more comfortable playing together each day.  Senior captain Nick Bastis (Greenwich, CT) had a great day with 4 goals and an assist running both at attack and midfield.  It was also nice to see sophomore Skyler Hopkins (McDonogh, MD) and freshman Pete Smith (Deerfield, MA) get into the scoring column today as our 4th and 5th attackmen.  They allow us to run Jim Cabrera and Nick Bastis in the midfield which is always tough for an opposing team to handle. 

Overall it was the poise of all of our young guys who were stepping onto the field for only the second NESCAC game of their careers that impressed me the most.  I think that is a credit to the rest of the team for pushing them every day in practice and for how quickly these freshman feel they are a part of our program.

Time to get ready for the Generals of Washington and Lee coming up this Wednesday at 3:30pm. Hopefully we'll see some of you down in Virginia!

Best,

dc