We got our spring break off to a good start with a 12-4 win over the Camels yesterday in Alumni Stadium. After going 8-1 in the league last year, Conn had lost their first two league games to Amherst and Trinity this year before getting a 6OT win against Union the other day. Over the past few years we’ve had some tight games with Conn as they’ve been able to slow things down to a crawl and employ an effective zone against us. Needless to say it was nice to open it up against them and win by a comfortable margin.

While our performance was still far from perfect, there were some encouraging signs for us yesterday. The most glaring was our wing play on face offs which allowed us to go 50% on the day. Conn has one of the best face off specialists in the league and had been winning 67% of his draws coming into our game, meaning we’ll take 50/50 against them as a win for us. Peter Jennings went 7 for 13 at the x and did a nice job of keeping the ball alive while Alex Giammarco and first year Darric White (Fairfield Prep, CT) both did a tremendous job on the wing. Alex scooped up four ground balls and had two big goals in transition which earned him the game ball.

We also got a nice boost from Ryan Deane in the goal as well as from our starting group of close defensemen, Henry Clark, John Duvnjak, and Chris Mejia. With Matt Rayner out for the game due to an injury sustained at Wesleyan last week, we didn’t skip a beat with Chris in there against the Camels.

Finally, it was good for our team to put some goals up on the board and not have to rely on David Hild to carry the entire load himself. To our surprise, Conn didn’t play a single possession in zone and shut David off on each of our settled possessions. Fortunately we’ve spent quite a bit of time against the shut off look in practice and if teams decide to go in that direction it will open up things for everyone else.

Time to get ready for the Generals who we’ll take on this Tuesday night at 7pm at Georgetown. Last year we had a great crowd on hand despite the lousy weather and hope we’ll get an even better group out this year. Hopefully we’ll see some of you there!