In last season’s opening-day tilt between Merrimack and Niagara, the Warriors made life miserable for the visiting Purple Eagles with a tremendous defensive effort. <\/p>\n
But Saturday Niagara served up a cold dish of karmic hockey, stifling Merrimack with a team commitment to blocking shots, clearing the zone and winning key faceoff battles, as they eked out a 1-0 victory and advanced to 2-3-1 on the season.<\/p>\n
Senior Niagara goaltender Juliano Pagliero turned away all 31 Merrimack shots. The Warriors actually attempted a staggering 58 shots, even though they gave the hosts six extra power-play attempts. Through it all, Pagliero stood tall and swallowed the puck when his team needed breathing space, particularly during the first 10 minutes of the opening period.<\/p>\n
“Coming off that tough game against Michigan,” Pagliero said. “I watched a lot of video with Coach (Greg) Gardner. He reinforced to me that I was playing well, but not well enough. I needed to get hungrier for the puck. And that’s what I concentrated on tonight.”<\/p>\n
Pagliero’s stellar play was almost voided by Niagara head coach Dave Burkholder, who admitted after the game that he was leaning toward benching Pagliero in favor of starting sophomore Adam Avramenko. A spirited discussion with assistant coaches Jerry Forton and Greg Gardner changed Burkholder’s mind.<\/p>\n
“There isn’t a day that goes by that Jerry and I don’t battle with each other over one thing or another,” Burkholder said. “Tonight was the night Pagliero won the game for us. Last year, he did it on many occasions. I wanted to rest him, if for anything, to give him a mental break after the Michigan game. ”<\/p>\n
“Last week we defeated Army 1-0,” Merrimack coach Mark Dennehy said, “and I would say that I wasn’t nearly as pleased with our effort then as I was tonight. We killed nearly half the game in penalty minutes and still outshot them. That’s pretty good. Niagara plays a hard game. They have a lot of skill. I have tremendous respect for Coach Burkholder’s teams. We need these tough early-season games to get ready for our upcoming in-conference matchups.”<\/p>\n
The lone goal of the contest came via the Niagara power play. Freshman Sam Goodwin notched his first collegiate goal with a nearly-perfect setup from defenseman Tyler Gotto midway through the second period and the Purple Eagles held on from there.<\/p>\n
Niagara seemed to gain its legs after Goodwin’s goal and as the contest wore on a gritty effort shook off any bitter taste left by the Michigan defeat. Twice the Purple Eagles killed off five-on-three situations. Pagliero credited his defense for his first shutout of the season.<\/p>\n
“Travis (Anderson) had an incredible presence out there tonight,” he said. “You could just feel him and Ryan (Annesley) take control of the game when we needed it. I can’t tell you how good it feels to have our D playing so tough. Dan Sullivan is the most unheralded player on our team. Nobody notices him because he doesn’t do anything wrong.”<\/p>\n
Niagara still has to play Maine, RIT and Canisius before entering regular season CHA play against Bemidji State on November 21. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
In last season’s opening-day tilt between Merrimack and Niagara, the Warriors made life miserable for the visiting Purple Eagles with a tremendous defensive effort. But Saturday Niagara served up a cold dish of karmic hockey, stifling Merrimack with a team commitment to blocking shots, clearing the zone and winning key faceoff battles, as they eked […]<\/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:\/\/wwwproxy.uscho.com\/recaps\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9033"}],"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\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wwwproxy.uscho.com\/recaps\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9033"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/wwwproxy.uscho.com\/recaps\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9033\/revisions"}],"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=9033"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wwwproxy.uscho.com\/recaps\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9033"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wwwproxy.uscho.com\/recaps\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9033"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wwwproxy.uscho.com\/recaps\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=9033"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}