Merrimack and St. Lawrence came out strong and battled on Saturday night in Merrimack, but it was the second period that made the difference as Merrimack scored twicein the period to come away with the 3-1 victory.
“We had great energy in the building tonight; we knew they were going to play hard but I thought we answered the bell,” said Merrimack coach Mark Dennehy. “We matched their intensity and ended up with a win, a hard-fought win.”
The first period was a back-and-forth game with hard-hitting action all throughout the period. Merrimack and St. Lawrence both had their opportunities early, but neither goaltender would blink. In the last half of the period St. Lawrence had three different chances on the power play, but Merrimack kept them scoreless.
The second period saw Merrimack open up the scoring and take control of the game just three minutes in when Brian Christie scored off an offensive zone faceoff to put Merrimack up 1-0.
With just four minutes remaining in the middle frame, Brett Seney rushed with the puck up the middle of the ice and deked past a couple of defenders to put his team up by a 2-0 score.
The third period would see much of the same action as the first, a very back-and-forth style with some physicality to go with it. St. Lawrence made the game interesting when Michael Ederer scored to cut the lead to 2-1.
With only 2:30 remaining, Merrimack’s Chris LeBlanc scored to make it a 3-1 advantage for Merrimack.
“It wasn’t until we were down 2-0 that we realized how hard we had to work,” said St. Lawrence coach Greg Carvel in a press release.”We came back and had some chances. We had a power play and didn’t score and then we hurt ourselves on the comeback with a couple of untimely penalties. I give them a lot of credit, they were easily the best team we have seen.”
Delia made 21 saves in the effort while Hayton made 24 saves.
“I thought it was a really great team win, it was a hard-fought win,” said Merrimack goaltender Colin Delia. “I really can’t take any credit, the boys played really well in front of me. We kept it fast, we kept it simple, and we knew what we had to do.”
