Weak Start to Season Ends on a High Note

 

 

After beginning their season with a disappointing showing at the Ice Breaker Tournament at Miami University in Ohio, the Raiders demonstrated steady improvement as they finished off last weekend with a home-opening win against Bentley.

In the opening game of the Ice Breaker Tournament, Vermont scored three goals within 5:05 minutes in the first period and never relented, beating the Raiders 6-0. In the following day’s consolation game Colgate dropped to 0-2-0 as they were unable to recover from three second-period power-play goals by Denver, who skated to a 3-2 win. Junior All-America candidate Tyler Burton scored the two Raider goals.

On Thursday, October 12th, the Raiders scored two first-period goals and held on to earn their first win of the season, 2-1, against Niagara at the Blue Cross Arena. Sophomore Jason Fredericks gave the Raiders a 1-0 lead with his first career goal and sophomore Peter Bogdanich followed 37 seconds later with a wraparound goal for his first of the season.

For their opening game at Starr Rink, the Raiders overcame a tightly-called match, ending with a combined 71 penalty minutes to beat Bentley, 5-1. Senior Marc Fulton scored a natural hat-trick and had a career-high five points, while first-year David McIntyre scored his first two collegiate goals.

“Our play is not where it needs to be,” Head Coach Don Vaughan said. “We need to stop trying to make the perfect shots.” Vaughan added that his team will try “different guys in different positions” until they obtain the perfect mixture.

“I feel like this was the game that’ll get us out of the slump we were in,” McIntyre said about the Bentley game. “It’ll be one that we can build on.” On October 24th at 7 p.m. the Raiders will host Canisius in hopes of stringing together a three-game winning streak to put their season record above .500.