Streaky
Without peeking, which two teams have the longest unbeaten streaks in Atlantic Hockey?
One is pretty easy: Holy Cross swept Mercyhurst in convincing fashion this past weekend, 5-4 and 7-3. The Crusaders never trailed on the weekend opening 3-0 and 5-0 leads on Friday and Saturday, respectively.
Holy Cross, which got goals from 10 different players, has won five games in a row and moved into sole possession of second place in the standings, a point behind first-place Robert Morris with a game in hand.
The second-longest unbeaten streak in the conference? That one’s a little tougher. At a modest four games, is Army West Point. The Black Knights swept Sacred Heart, 4-2 on Friday at the Milford Ice Pavilion and 5-2 on Saturday at Tate Rink. They’re now 3-0-1 in their last four.
Friday’s game was the more dramatic of the two, with Black Knight sophomore Nick DeCenzo getting the game-winner with just 37 seconds to play.
On Saturday, Sacred Heart got out to a 2-0 lead before Army West Point rattled off five straight goals to earn the sweep.
The Black Knights travel to American International next weekend while Holy Cross visits Bentley to close out the 2016 portion of their schedule.
Speaking of streaks
A couple of other streaks came to an end on Saturday at Rochester Institute of Technology’s Gene Polisseni Center.
Robert Morris was unbeaten in six straight, including a 4-0 win at RIT the night before, while the Tigers hadn’t won since Nov. 6, a span of five games.
But the Tigers erased an early 2-1 deficit to defeat the first-place Colonials, 6-3.
Myles Powell scored the tying and game-winning goals, and RIT overcame a pair of tallies by the nation’s best power play to earn a split.
A good problem to have, but still a problem
On Friday, Robert Morris senior goaltender Terry Shafer made a triumphant return to his home town, blanking host RIT 4-0. Shafer made 37 saves to earn his fifth career shutdown, tying a school record shared by Eric Lavine ’13 and Shafer’s teammate Dalton Izyk, a junior.
RMU coach Derek Schooley has split time in net evenly between Shafer and Izyk, two of the top goaltenders in the conference.
So despite blanking the Tigers on Friday, Safer was on the bench on Saturday. Iyzk didn’t fare as well, allowing six goals.
Earlier in the season, it was Iyzk who was playing slightly better (the loss on Saturday was his first of the year), but Schooley continued to alternate his goaltenders. So it wasn’t surprising that now that Shafer is playing very well, the rotation stayed intact.
Keeping two quality goaltenders happy is a great problem to have, but it’s still a problem. It will be interesting to see how things play out the rest of the way.
