Hockey Improves to 4-0 at Home with 4-1 Win over Connecticut
NORTH ANDOVER, MA - Junior captain Chris Barton
(Calgary, AB) had a goal and an assist as the Merrimack
hockey team improved to 4-0 at home for the first time since
joining Hockey East with a 4-1 victory over the University of
Connecticut Sunday afternoon at Lawler Arena.
The Warriors improve to 4-2 on the season, 1-0 in Hockey East
with the victory, while the Huskies drop to 0-4 overall. Merrimack
will battle #14 Boston College next weekend in a home-and-home
series beginning Friday night at 7 p.m. at Conte Forum in Chestnut
Hill, MA and continuing Sunday at 4 p.m. at Lawler Arena.
Two power-play goals 1:07 apart in the first gave the Warriors
the early 2-0 lead. At 12:33, Jesse Todd (Camrose,
AB) took a pretty cross ice feed from Karl
Stollery (Camrose, AB) and fired it into the open net for
his second of the season. Barton earned his first helper of the
year, as the junior captain started the play, getting the puck to
Stollery on the point.
Sixty-seven seconds later, senior captain Pat Bowen
(Marshfield, MA) netted his first of the season, wristing
one over the glove of Jeff Larson. Simon Demers (St.
Etienne de Lauzon, QC) earned one assist as he dished it
to Stephane Da Costa (Paris, France), who passed
it across the zone to Bowen, who drove to the net from the blue
line and buried it past Larson.
Barton made it 3-0 just 1:40 into the second as Stollery sent
him in on a breakaway, and the captain backhanded his team-leading
sixth of the season past Larson just as a Merrimack penalty had
expired.
“We have some better players now,” said head coach
Mark Dennehy. “When we play a certain way, we'll get
chances. I don't for a second pretend that I invented this
game, but there are things we've talked about in the locker
room. We've done some things that we've done in the
past but we couldn't take advantage of it before. We
stretched the zone before, but we never got anything out of it. Now
we are. We're not doing anything too different, we're
just not taking advantage of it.”
Justin Hernandez foiled Andrew Braithwaite's (Kingston,
ON) shutout attempt, as he grabbed a loose puck off a
scramble in front of the senior netminder, wristing it home at 6:57
of the second on the power play.
But the Warriors, who have scored first in each of their four
victories, held on from there, and Elliott Sheen
(Lethbridge, AB) tacked on his second empty-netter in as
many games, as the hosts picked up their third straight three-goal
victory.
Braithwaite was sharp in net, stopping 23 shots in the victory,
while Larson recorded 26 saves.
The Warrior power play continues to click, scoring two more
man-advantage tallies, giving them eight power-play markers in
their last four games.
Stollery registered two assists for the second straight game,
while Demers extended his point streak to three games.
