By Dominic LoVallo
Staff Writer
The St. Bonaventure club hockey team is entering its final weekend of hockey action before beginning a five-week hiatus due to the upcoming semester break.
This past weekend, the Bonnies took on the Cortland State University of New York Red Dragons for the team’s only game of the week. The Red Dragons handed the Bonnies a 9-2 loss. The loss drops the Bonnies to 3-10-1 on the season.
Both of the goals scored for Bonaventure were by team assistant captain and senior forward John Rogers.
Throughout the season, the team has struggled to keep momentum going past the first period. The Bonnies have struggled to maintain their high level of play late into games, and this continued to be the case for the game against the Red Dragons. Sophomore Tyler Gokey thought the team really kept Cortland off its game in the first, but after the initial 20 minutes of play, the team broke down and lost its control over the game.
“We started off great in the first period; we were hitting and Cortland could not handle the puck,” Gokey said. “But then we started to have break downs and let our emotions show, and once that happened, we stopped playing how we did at first.”
The Bonnies’ penalty problems continued last Saturday leading to a penalty shot goal being scored to give the Red Dragons’ their second goal of the game.
In yet another undisciplined mistake, the team also lost junior defenseman Sean Devine for the second half of the game due to a game misconduct penalty.
Another nine goals allowed doesn’t sit well with team-leading goal scorer, freshman Andrew Hayn. Hayn believes the team needs to fix its defensive positioning in order to stop the onslaught of goals the team has been letting up. After that, he said, the team needs to improve on translating that defense into offensive zone production and more play that end with shots and goals.
“Defensive zone coverage is definitely a big thing that we need to work on. We have been caught out of position a lot, and those mistakes led to most of the goals we have given up,” Hayn said. “We also need to work on taking advantage of our chances in the offensive zone. We have no problem getting in the zone and getting shots off, but we have had trouble putting the puck in the net, especially recently.”
Just by looking at the score differential of the last three games, one could see just how little production the Bonnies are getting compared to that of their opponents.
In the past three games, the Bonnies have been outscored by their opponents by a 23-6 margin. If the Bonnies want to start winning games, production is going to need to pick up or else the team is in for a sad start to its Christmas vacation.
The Bonnies have two games this weekend, the first coming Friday night on the road. The team will face off against the Erie Community College Kats at Terry Pegula’s latest project, the newly constructed Buffalo Harbor Center. The puck is slated to drop at 7:25 p.m.
The Bonnies will then be back home Saturday for a 3 p.m. game against the Canisius Golden Griffins at the William O’Smith Recreation Center.
