Sorry this has taken a few days to get out, just finished up getting ready for practice this afternoon and wanted to send a quick note. As you all know by now, we picked up two more wins over the weekend and feel extremely fortunate to still be playing after our game on Sunday against the Mules.

On Friday the Ephs came to town knowing they were about to play their last game of the season and certainly played like they had nothing to lose. As I’ve been predicting all season long they were healthy for our game after having two of their top 3 returning scorers on the sideline for most of the year. If these guys were healthy all year I don’t think they end up 1-8 in the conference.

As for the game, they jumped out to a quick 3-0 lead with a few goals coming in transition. We finally put a few in the back of the net to pull within one at the end of the first but felt like we had let them off the hook by only converting on 2 of 19 shots in the quarter! Fortunately the guys starting burying some shots in the 2nd with David Hild notching a few and Griff McGoldrick letting one rip on a fast break from about 12 yards out. Williams would hang around through the 3rd quarter due mainly to their exceptional face off specialist who won 16 of 23 draws on the day. We would see another great face off guy on Sunday but I would have to give the nod to Corey Jacobs from Williams as the best draw man we’ve seen all year.

In the fourth quarter we were able to break an 8-8 tie by scoring three straight goals, the first came in transition as Griff McGoldrick stuck a lefty shot in transition. Then Erich Pfeffer split lefty for a nice shot off hip from 10 yards out and finally Darric White scored his first career goal in transition off of a feed from Mike Giordano. Darric has put himself in some great situations so far this year in transition so it was nice for him to finally get one.

Going into Sunday we knew we’d have our hands full as Colby’s Craig Bunker came into the day facing off at 72% on the year and they had generated some nice looks on offense in the first game. As it turned out, they continued to generate great looks against us all day long but fortunately for us we have the best goalie in the league and Ryan was able to steal the game for us.

We came out on fire as we won the first six face offs of the game, took an early 4-0 lead, and seemed to be playing at a different speed than the Mules. We took 15 shots in the quarter and had a chance to take them completely out of the game but their goalie made a few nice saves and we missed on a few open looks. They finally got on the board late in the first and from there on out they’d continue to claw their way back into the game.

The two plays of the game came in the middle of the field. The first being in a riding situation where Mike Giordano sprinted back to the midline to deflect a pass that Billy Chapman scooped up and took to the hoop. Billy has really become a threat in transition and is playing with a tremendous amount of confidence right now as he looked off both of our attackman and stuck the shot from 8 yards himself! The second play came on the opening face off in the 2nd overtime. We had stressed going into the game that we needed a team effort on every face off and that’s exactly what we got for the game winner. Bunker won the draw and had the ball in his stick when Darric White put it back on the ground. Now that there was possession a Colby defender picked up the ball coming out of the restraining box when Darric jumped him as well. As their kid was under pressure he decided to go back to the goalie with the ball but Dave Hild had sprinted over to intercept the pass and finished it on the doorstep for the game winner.

We certainly dodged a bullet as Colby had some good looks at the end of regulation and in OT but our guys hung in there and finally made a play to win it. We had a great practice yesterday and will be ready for the Bantams this Saturday down at Tufts. The first semifinal is Tufts vs. Bowdoin at noon and our game is scheduled to start at 3pm. We played one of our best games of the year in our first match up with Trinity and will need a similar effort to extend our season on Saturday. We hope to see a few of you there!