Kickin' some Serious MASCAC

The Plymouth State Men's Hockey team is on their way to their third Massachusetts State Collegiate Athletic Conference hockey game after defeating Westfield State University on Tuesday (3/5) night. Aside from being four games above .500 for the first time this season (with an overall record of 14-10-2), the Panthers will face Salem State University as they look to capture their second MASCAC title in two seasons.

Zach Fox (Sandown, N.H.) got the game going for PSU, as he scored only 36 seconds into the contest upon Mike Freitag (Westmont, IL) and Zach Sarig (Reading, PA) set up the sophomore for the goal. Not only did this get the Panthers going, but it gave the home crowd something to be happy for. Being able to get that home-ice advantage for the Panthers is something that truly gets them going.

Westfield scored two goals in the seconds half of the 1^st period to take a 2-1 lead going into the second intermission. After Head Coach Craig Russell settled his team down, first year player Ian McGilvrey (Omaha, NE) scored his 12^th goal of the season to tie the game up at 2 apiece. Andrew Wigg (Lantz, N.S.) and Tommy Dowell (Olathe, KS) had the assists on the play to allow McGilvrey to get his 31^st point of the season.

About two minutes later, with Westfield State on the power play, the sophomore Wigg scored what would be the game winning goal after a nice set-up from Junior Chad Barthelmess (Norristown, PA). By PSU being able to capture the lead with 28:26 left to play in the game, the defense had to close the game out so the Panthers were able to come away with the win.

In the third period, Westfield was limited to only seven shots on goal, in which Gordon Ceasar (Oak Park, CA) stopped all of the shots. As chants of "Ceasar's Palace" came from the student section of the crowd, players like Dave Walters (Ottawa, Ont.), Matt Vermillion (South Lyon, MI) and Erik Strom (Gothenburg, Sweden) stopped any charge that Westfield had.

Looking ahead to the MASCAC championship game, the one and two seeds of the post-season tournament are going to be playing each other. Both teams accumulated the same number of points during the regular season, but Salem State was able to go 2-0-1 against PSU this season. Due to this, the 2:00 P.M. contest will be played down at Salem State University, in Massachusetts.

Between all three games that were played between the two teams, all of the games were decided by a goal, or less. The difference between those games and now is that the Panthers have been really starting to click extremely well, as they are riding a five game win streak, and have not been beaten in their past nine games. Within that span, there were two ties, one of which was against Salem State.

These are the two best teams that have played in the MASCAC all season. With PSU having lost in the championship game last season (against UMass Dartmouth), look for the Panthers to come out with guns blazing. My prediction is that PSU will get the 4-2 win after Josh Woody (Sunderland, MD), Tieg Alward (Vail, CO), Sarig and Freitag all score goals for Plymouth, and Gordon Ceasar has 28 saves.