Subject: St. Nicks club at Bentley exhibition, Sat. 10/12/2002, box/comments
(Box from my notes)
Saturday, October 12, 2002 at John A. Ryan Arena, Watertown, MA
ST NICKS 5, BENTLEY 3 EXHIBITION GAME
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ST NICK'S club (independent) 1 4 0 - 5
BENTLEY COLLEGE (MAAC) 1 1 1 - 3
SN - Kevin O'Malley ?- ?- ? - ? saves/3 goals (60:00)
BC - Simon St. Pierre ?- ?- x - ? saves/2 goals (31:50)
Bill Bridge x- ?- ? - ? saves/3 goals (13:10 ??)
Geordan Murphy x- x- ? - ? saves/0 goals (15:00 ??)
Attendance - maybe 250 ?
1st Period
BC1 Jake Plattner (Jeremy Chase, Kevin Osborne) 1:28
SN1 Henry Higdon (Charlie Humber, Jim Morrissey) 11:04
2nd Period
BC2 Tim Lovell (Paul Markarian, Ryan Mayhew) 3:55
SN2 Jim Morrissey (Daryl Jones, Keith McCullough) PPG 8:28
SN3 Jim Morrissey (Tyler Garrow, Andre Wyttenbach) 13:00
SN4 Rob Capone (Tyler Garrow, T.R. Coccaro) 13:49
SN5 Rob Capone (Nick Pierandri, Tyler Garrow) 17:58
3rd Period
BC3 Kevin Osborne (Ryan Mayhew, Tim Lovell) PPG 17:10
St. Nick's Hockey club
D 2 Daryl Jones - Yale ('98)
3 Charlie Humber - Brown ('96)
4 Jim Morrissey - Yale ('99)
6 (not on roster listing)
20 Rich Miller - Providence ('00)
F 7 Scott Turco - Harvard ('00)
8 Jay Quenville - Yale ('00)
9 Rob Capone - L.I. Jr. Islanders ('94)
11 Marc Wyttenbach - Cornell ('94)
12 Keith Dupee - RPI ('00)
14 Tyler Garrow - Brown ('00)
15 T.R. Coccaro - Army ('98)
16 Henry Higdon - Harvard ('98)
17 Mark Turco - Yale ('99)
18 Andre Wyttenbach - Cornell ('97)
22 Nick Pierandri - Boston College ('00)
25 Keith McCullough - Yale ('99)
G 33 Kevin O'Malley - Michigan ('02)
1 Al Loges - Michigan ('95)
others listed for St. Nick's but not present Saturday night:
10 Jeff Brow - Yale ('00)
19 Matt McLeod - Harvard ('00)
21 John Gauger - Yale ('01)
23 Lance Marciano - Yale ('91)
24 Joe Russo - Plattsburgh ('99)
26 Tony DelCarmine - Dartmouth ('94)
33 Jason Currie - Clarkson ('95)
Bentley College
F 9 Ryan Mayhew D 2 Ryan Kelly G 35 Simon St. Pierre
10 Andy Peters 3 Seth Vinocur 1 Bill Bridge
11 Bryan Goodwin 6 Kevin Osborne 30 Geordan Murphy
12 Gus LaBelle 7 Josh Chase
13 Joe Lovell 18 Joshua Downs
17 Jeremy Chase 26 Brett Murphy
19 Josh Thompson
20 Marcus Willy
22 Jon Williams
23 Chris Quinn
42 Jake Plattner
44 Paul Markarian
COMMENTS
--------
In what I hope will be a new tradition for Bentley College, they played an
exhibition to start their season Saturday night in Watertown. The opponent
was St. Nick's hockey club, a NYC-based group of ex-collegians who played
two other MAAC clubs in exhibitions, losing to Sacred Heart the week before
(8-2), and beating AIC Sunday night (5-4). St. Nick's looks to be loosely
based around ex-Yale players, with a bunch of Harvard and other Ivies thrown
in, and a few others as well.
Bentley has been at the bottom of the pack in the MAAC since it started, and
is hoping to start improving this year with a lot of new freshmen faces.
Many of the new players have experience in the junior ranks, and it appears
that they skate better than the past few classes. Of course, the rest of
the league continues to improve as well, so it will probably be another long
season for the Falcons. (The exhibition results seem to bear that out.)
Bentley was missing 3 experienced lettermen for this game, so they may have
been a little below full strength.
The game certainly started well for Bentley, scoring just 1:28 into the game
on a close-in shot. St. Nick's was a bit slow and rusty to start, and they
are not in the shape that the college players are. However, they did play
at a pretty high level when they were in school, and the talent level helped
even things out. St. Nick's evened the score at 1 when Henry Higdon was
able
to collect his own rebound on the right side, circle the net, and stuff a
wraparound attempt into the goal. The rest of the first period was fairly
even, and Simon St. Pierre looked good in net for the Falcons.
Period 2 was again back-and-forth to start, with play getting a bit more
physical and chippy. Bentley jumped back in front on a very nice passing
play, moving the puck from the left wing over to a flying right wing, and
then getting a quick feed back to the left for an easy tap-in. St. Nick's
evened it up with a power play goal just after a 5-on-3 advantage ended,
with a hard slapper finding its way through a heavy screen in front. At
this point Bentley was fairly even with St. Nick's, but sloppy play and
turnovers led to trouble. Bill Bridge came in to net for the Falcons, and
had little time to adjust before getting peppered with good shots. Bad
clearances and turnovers in the defensive end gave St. Nick's clear shots
from in front, and they made no mistake. Two close shots in crowds and a
well-placed open slap shot made the score 5-2 at the end of the 2nd.
The goalscoring got things a bit physical in the third with some cheap shots
both ways and anger between players. (This may be a disadvantage of an
exhibition against non-institutional teams, I'm not sure what sanctions
could
be imposed if things got out of hand.) St. Nick's eased off a bit with the
lead and Bentley stopped making stupid turnovers, and scoring came to a halt
despite the number of power plays and 4-on-4 situations. Freshman goalie
Geordan Murphy entered the nets for Bentley early in the third period and
did alright with the shots sent his way. Bentley got a late goal on the
power play when a point shot was saved but deflected off a body in front
and into the net for the final score.
The Falcons had to be pleased to get so many new players on the ice and
a little game experience. The Chase brothers out of Big Rapids, MI have
some skills, and Jake Plattner and Paul Markarian worked hard with some
size. Strangely enough, it was some of the upperclassmen who didn't appear
to have advanced their games since last year, and they will have to work
hard to lead by example if the team is to move out of last place in the
conference. 7 of the 9 points for Bentley came from the freshman class.
Bentley opens with a non-conference tournament at MAAC rival
Quinnipiac next week, and will have to work harder to have any chance at
all.
Still, the fact that they got some game experience before diving right into
the schedule is a plus. Bentley is still struggling at the Division I
level,
without a lot of support from the school or fans, and new coach Ryan
Soderquist will have a hard time moving them up. (They are the preseason
pick for tops in the "Bottom Ten", a humorous take on rankings over on
USCHO. We'll see if they can at least finish above AIC or Fairfield.)
I had a chance to talk to Nick Pierandri, ex-Boston College player after the
game to get a little background on St. Nick's. He says they are a group of
NYC-based players who get together on Wednesday's for practice and the club
has been around for something like 100 years. Leadership of the club tends
to rotate among players who want to organize things; right now it seems to
be mostly driven by ex-Yale players, and the Turco's seemed to be the
leaders. Interesting to see some older players who we had seen in their
college days still competing. He said they also travel some, out to
Wisconsin for some games, and other stuff. The goalkeeper for St. Nick's
was ex-Michigan player Kevin O'Malley, I think, who just graduated last
year, and he looked pretty sharp (at least against a Bentley.) I don't
think he played that much at UMich. (I'm not completely sure on this,
because the roster listed Jason Currie, ex of Clarkson, with the same jersey
number. But I think the rink announcer said it was O'Malley.)
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