Army captured the first of a must-win two-game series with American International Friday night, making a 4-3 winner out of head coach Rob Riley in his 500th game behind the Black Knights’ bench.<\/p>\n
In picking up its first road win of the 2001-02 season at the Olympia Ice Center, Army (6-15-5\/4-8-5) moved three points ahead of AIC for the eighth and final playoff spot in the Metro Atlantic Athletic Conference standings.<\/p>\n
The Black Knights jumped out to an early 3-1 lead in the first period. Senior captain Tim Murphy got the visitors started when he scored 4:55 into the contest off a feed from Nathan Mayfield. Thirty seconds later, Mayfield made it a two-goal advantage when freshman defenseman Justin Fagan sent the senior winger in all alone on a breakaway. After AIC (6-13-0\/5-12-0) pulled within a goal three minutes later, Army answered right back as freshman defenseman Matt Field scored unassisted. <\/p>\n
The Black Knights dictated much of the play in the second period, outshooting the Yellow Jackets, 17-7. Freshman Chris Garceau scored a power-play goal midway through the middle stanza, staking Army to a 4-1 lead. Garceau redirected a shot from classmate Chris Casey at the point. Casey received a cross from Chad Mayfield, who had held the puck in the zone along the far boards, and fed Garceau standing right in front of the goal. <\/p>\n
Senior goaltender Scott Hamilton picked up his second straight win, making 28 saves on the evening. AIC freshman goaltender Frank Novello also made 28 saves in the losing effort.<\/p>\n
“(Hamilton) has gotten two wins in a row for us. He made some big saves near the end,” Riley said. “In the third period, he did a good job of clearing the puck out of our end. His puck-handling certainly was a key down the stretch.<\/p>\n
“It was a must-win for both teams. We need to learn how to win on the road if we want to be a factor in the playoffs.”<\/p>\n
AIC battled back, scoring a power-play goal in the third period and then getting its third tally of the night on a tip-in that just trickled over the goal line. But it was not enough to beat a determined Army hockey squad backstopped by the stellar play of Hamilton between the pipes.<\/p>\n
These same two teams will go at it again Saturday night at Tate Rink with faceoff scheduled for 7 p.m.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Army captured the first of a must-win two-game series with American International Friday night, making a 4-3 winner out of head coach Rob Riley in his 500th game behind the Black Knights’ bench. In picking up its first road win of the 2001-02 season at the Olympia Ice Center, Army (6-15-5\/4-8-5) moved three points ahead […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"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:\/\/wp-admin.uscho.com\/recaps\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2930"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp-admin.uscho.com\/recaps\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp-admin.uscho.com\/recaps\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp-admin.uscho.com\/recaps\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp-admin.uscho.com\/recaps\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2930"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/wp-admin.uscho.com\/recaps\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2930\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp-admin.uscho.com\/recaps\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/22374"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp-admin.uscho.com\/recaps\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2930"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp-admin.uscho.com\/recaps\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2930"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp-admin.uscho.com\/recaps\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2930"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp-admin.uscho.com\/recaps\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=2930"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}