It was a battle of the top two teams in the MASCAC conference Thursday night January 31st as the first place Plymouth State men’s hockey team (14-5-0) took their 10-2 conference record down to Westfield, Massachusetts to take on second place Westfield State University Owls (11-6-1) and their 7-4-1 conference record in a game that certainly had high expectations.
This was the rubber match as the two teams had gone to overtime twice already this season. They split those two games, with the home team winning each match-up. Those games were barn-burners, and this one would be no different. The scoring started when freshman Tieg Alward (Vail, CO) lit the lamp on a feed from sophomore Mike Freitag (Westmont, IL) to put the Panthers on top.
The previous games between these teams set the stage for bad blood as the physicality was turned up in this one. The two teams combined for numerous penalties in the first period, and Westfield took advantage with a power-play goal from Billy Miller to knot the score and a go-ahead goal from Dalton Jay to take a 1-2 lead.
The game’s physical tone had been set and Westfield State’s Todd Gerbert took it to another level when he earned a major penalty for head-butting and game misconduct with just over a minute to go in the first period. Plymouth State outshot the Owls 17-11 in the first period, but only one goal to show for it. That changed in the second period when the Panthers scored three straight goals: a power-play redirect from junior Phil Arone (Litchfield, NH), another from senior Kyle Grecco (Hillside, IL), and then one from sophomore Zach Sarig (Reading, PA) on a feed from Arone to make the score 4-2.
Penalties were all too frequent in this one, and Westfield State took advantage of the man-advantage again when Dalton Jay scored his second goal of the game to close the second period scoring.
The third period was all Westfield State and TJ Powers. Powers scored the tying and go-ahead power-play goal in the final frame and despite 14 shots on goal in the third period, Plymouth couldn’t get another puck by Owls goalie Ian Perrier (43 saves). Westfield State added an empty-net goal to get to the final score of 4-6.
The game was rough and physical from start to finish as the two teams combined for 51 penalty minutes. Senior net-minder Jack Astedt (Angelholm, Sweden) had 35 saves in net for the Panthers and both Arone and Sarig had multi-point games for the Panthers. Plymouth State remains in first place the MASCAC despite their in-conference record falling to 10-3. The Panthers (14-6) will look to rebound this Saturday, February 2, when they travel to conference foe Framingham State (2-16-1), who are still searching for their first conference win.