After skating to a 1-1 tie on Friday night in North Andover, No. 7 Lowell (3-0-2) and No. 19 Merrimack (2-0-2) saw similar results at Tsongas Center on Saturday, with the match again ending in a 1-1 draw.<\/p>\n
After a scoreless first period, Merrimack finally drew first blood at 13:35 of the second. Jonathan Lashyn passed the puck to Justin Hassar in the high slot, and Hassar fired a shot and it was tipped by Brian Christie and over the shoulder of Kevin Boyle for the 1-0 lead.<\/p>\n
Just a minute and six seconds after the Merrimack goal, Lowell struck back to tie the game at one. Joe Gambardella stole the puck in the corner and fed a pass into the slot for Michael Kapla, who ripped a shot under the glove of Collin Delia to knot the game at one.<\/p>\n
With just under two minutes to play in the period, Merrimack was given a five-on-three advantage when Dylan Zink went off for slashing.
\nThe River Hawks killed off the penalty despite a flurry of shots by the Warriors. Lowell coach Norm Bazin credited a gain of momentum after the penalty kill.<\/p>\n
“I thought we gained a lot of energy from that five-on-three (power play) kill. We did a good job of containing the puck and generating zone-time, and I saw a lot of life in the third period and overtime.”<\/p>\n
Despite the success on the penalty kill, Bazin notes that there is a lot of improvement to be made on special teams.<\/p>\n
“We have a lot to improve on, and we have to dissect the power play to see where we can get better and see more production.”<\/p>\n
After Adam Chapie was robbed by Collin Delia on a point-blank chance in the final minute of the third period, the game went to overtime.<\/p>\n
In the extra period, the River Hawks carried the play, but failed to produce a winning goal despite incredible chances by AJ White and Adam Chapie. Time ran out and the game ended in a one-all draw.<\/p>\n
Following the 21 save performance, Kevin Boyle gave credit to his teammates for allowing him to start the season with such success.<\/p>\n
“My teammates are doing a great job allowing me to see the puck; makes my job a lot easier. I’ve got to give all the credit to them.”<\/p>\n
Merrimack coach Mark Dennehy praised his team’s defensive effort as well as his goaltender, Collin Delia.<\/p>\n
“I thought our guys did a good job of sacrificing their bodies and blocking shots. To hold a good team like that to less then 2- shots on back-to-back nights is positive. That and the play of Collin (Delia) I would say were two of our strong suits this weekend.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
After skating to a 1-1 tie on Friday night in North Andover, No. 7 Lowell (3-0-2) and No. 19 Merrimack (2-0-2) saw similar results at Tsongas Center on Saturday, with the match again ending in a 1-1 draw. After a scoreless first period, Merrimack finally drew first blood at 13:35 of the second. Jonathan Lashyn […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":29,"featured_media":22374,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"coauthors":[],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wwwproxy.uscho.com\/recaps\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21022"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wwwproxy.uscho.com\/recaps\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wwwproxy.uscho.com\/recaps\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wwwproxy.uscho.com\/recaps\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/29"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wwwproxy.uscho.com\/recaps\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21022"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/wwwproxy.uscho.com\/recaps\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21022\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":21023,"href":"https:\/\/wwwproxy.uscho.com\/recaps\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21022\/revisions\/21023"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wwwproxy.uscho.com\/recaps\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/22374"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wwwproxy.uscho.com\/recaps\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21022"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wwwproxy.uscho.com\/recaps\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21022"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wwwproxy.uscho.com\/recaps\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21022"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wwwproxy.uscho.com\/recaps\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=21022"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}