Hockey finishes road stretch with a tie

The hockey team finished its six game road stretch Tuesday night with a 4-4 tie at Suffolk University. The non-league game brought the Jumbos record to 4-4-3 and did not affect their sixth place standing in the NESCAC. While pleased it did not lose the game, the team certainly was not ecstatic that it had to settle for a tie.

"We didn't play well at all," senior co-captain Mike Carceo said. "We played down to their level, and that can't happen."

Tufts went into the game at somewhat of a disadvantage with players missing time due to injury. The Jumbos were without their starting goalie, junior Ben Crapser, as well as one of their leading scorers, sophomore forward Gino Rotondi. But for those who played, these injuries could not be used as an excuse.

"We can't blame the injuries," sophomore forward Shawn Sullivan said. "We expected to beat these guys pretty good even without those guys, but they just wanted it more than we did."

Often when a team comes back from being down and achieves a tie, it can be encouraging. But the Tufts was the team in this game that could not hold the lead and even though it out shot Suffolk 47-34, it was forced to settle for the tie.

Although they outshot Suffolk 15-12, the first period started out slow for the Jumbos. They went to intermission down 1-0 on a Sean Delaney goal past freshman goalie Tim Kane, who was making his collegiate debut.

"We came out flat in the first period," sophomore forward John Hurd said.

In the second period, the teams played more evenly. Freshman defenseman Pat Walsh scored the first goal of his career 2:26 into the period on passes from freshman forward Rick Baker and junior forward Timm Schatz to knot the game. Twelve minutes later, Tufts went up 2-1 on Sullivan's fifth goal of the year, assisted by freshman forwards Matt McCarthy and Ken Cleary. But only three minutes later, the Rams' Pat Donovan would score to knot the game at 2-2.

The third period was characterized by back and forth play and the inability of either team to gain any momentum before its opponent would thwart it. McCarthy continued his stellar debut season with his fifth goal of the year 2:10 into the period. The 3-2 lead would not last for long, though, as Suffolk's Ricky Morrell snuck the puck past Kane five minutes later. The Jumbos did not let that discourage them though, as less than a minute after Morrell's goal, Cleary netted his third tally of the year on assists from Sullivan and McCarthy.

But the Rams would not allow the Jumbos to keep them down. Tufts junior defenseman John Van Pelt was called for interference with Tufts up 4-3 and only 4:59 left in regulation. Suffolk made the most of the power play opportunity, as Morrell netted his second of the game with only two seconds remaining on the Jumbos' penalty kill.

Overtime proved to be a stalemate, even though the Jumbos out shot the Rams 5-1 in the session. The team was displeased with its inability to put the other team away.

"After a tough loss [last Saturday at Skidmore 3-2], we needed to win this one to start a winning streak," Hurd said. "A tie is unacceptable."

Sullivan agreed. "We needed an insurance goal or two, and we couldn't get any," he said. "We didn't have that killer instinct, but we're going to need to find it before this weekend."

This weekend holds two of the Jumbos biggest and toughest games of the season. They play host to Bowdoin (10-2-0, ranked #7 in the country) only to follow it up by seeing Colby (9-3-0, ranked #11 in the country) invade Malden Arena on Saturday. The Jumbos know that only bringing their best game to the rink will produce wins in these two games.

"We have to play up to our potential," Carceo said. "If we do that, as well as learn from the mistakes we've made the last couple of games, we should be able to get some points out of the weekend."