Now that the dust has settled a bit I wanted to follow up with a quick game recap of the St. Lawrence game yesterday.  I guess the first thing I should mention is that we lucked out with the weather, it was sunny and in the mid 70's throughout the game.  Within an hour of the game wrapping up we had ourselves quite a storm which ended up knocking out power in the area.

After watching St. Lawrence play Nazareth the other day, we knew we'd have our hands full with these guys.  They have a dominant face off specialist who can put the ball wherever he wants, the Player of the Year in their conference in the midfield and an excellent attackman.  They also have a few defensemen who can put the ball on the ground as well as a pretty good goalie between the pipes.   Early on they controlled the pace of the game, had long possessions and had some good looks at the cage.  On the other hand we had some very quick possessions and their goalie made a few saves early.  Before you knew it we were down 3-0. 

The good news is that I don't think there was a single person on our sideline or on the field who had a sense of panic.  We've been down at some point in most of our games this year and we're used to having to scratch and claw our way back into a game. We finally got ourselves on the board after a nice feed by Skyler Hopkins to Matt Ferrer on the crease in which Matt had to make a tough catch and buried it in the low corner.  The next goal came from junior Jack Masur who ended up winning the game ball for his 3 goals on the day.  I may have written about Jack earlier in the year but he's a guy who has been tearing it up in practice all season long.  He's stuck behind both Tom Petty and David Hild on the depth chart but I've been giving him a few minutes here and there since the middle of the season.  Jack may be our best attackman in terms of getting to the cage, he's pretty slippery and on all three of his goals he weaved his way through the defense to get a shot from within 2 yards. 

Dave Campbell had a good day facing off by going 11 for 25, even though he was under 50% he gave us enough possessions to be able to make a few runs. We also had some good wing play from freshmen Matt Rayner and Zach Dayno.  This was the first game of the year where we consistently put two poles up on the wing to be able to contest the 50/50 balls off the draw and it turned out to be a good strategy.  Pete Britt also did a great job in the cage, he made a bunch of solid saves and then stole a few which also allowed us to keep some momentum going.

The other big story of this game was our play in the 3rd quarter where we outscored them 7-0.  At halftime we talked about having to win the gb battle for the rest of the game and also being able to handle the pressure St. Lawrence was putting on us all over the field.  SLU actually did a nice job of contesting loose balls and pressing out on the defensive end, it took us a half to be able to take advantage of them being so extended. 

Now it's time to get ready for the Cardinals for a third time.  Let's just say I'm not the only one up here who is excited to get another shot at them this year.  It should be a great one on Wednesday, stay tuned.