Vermont goaltender Joe Fallon made 20 saves to record his 20th career shutout, and sophomore Colin Vock scored the game\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s only goal as the Catamounts took Game 1 of the Hockey East Quarterfinals, 1-0, over Northeastern Friday at Gutterson Fieldhouse.<\/p>\n
The shutout is the third in six games for Fallon, who ranks second all-time in NCAA history.<\/p>\n
A goaltenders\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 duel, Northeastern\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Brad Thiessen made 27 saves himself, allowing only Vock\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s second-period tally.<\/p>\n
At 6:48 of the second, Vock jumped out of the penalty box and Reese Wisnowski found him with a long pass skating through center. His wrister from the right circle beat Thiesessen stick side, just inside the post.<\/p>\n
Vock\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s seventh goal of the year was enough to beat the Huskies on a night UVM head coach Kevin Sneddon said his team didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t play its best.<\/p>\n
\u00e2\u20ac\u0153I was impressed with our team at points in the game, but I wasn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t impressed with our team in several others,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d he said. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153So, I think the challenge now is that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s three periods out of the six, and we\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve got to be much better in the next three periods.<\/p>\n
\u00e2\u20ac\u0153I thought it was a great goaltenders\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 game,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d he said. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153I thought Brad Thiessen played fantastic; I thought Joe Fallon was sensational. So when you get those two guys playing the way they did tonight, you knew it was going to be a one-goal game, quite frankly.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n
\u00e2\u20ac\u0153It was a great college hockey game,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d said NU head coach Greg Cronin. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153A lot of excitement, a lot of posts and pucks rolling across [the] crease. I give Vermont credit; they\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re just a tough team to play against. Defensively they block shots, and they try to keep you out on the perimeter, and they did a very good job of that.<\/p>\n
The first period was scoreless, but not void of scoring chances for either side. Brad Thiessen made 11 saves in the period, including several good ones to keep his team from being down heading to the second.<\/p>\n
The Catamounts were buzzing with less than eight minutes to go in the period. Brayden Irwin forced Thiessen to make two solid saves on the same shift from the hash marks. Shortly thereafter, with the teams skating four-on-four, Dean Strong rang the post from the slot, with 7:11 to play.<\/p>\n
Vock took an interference penalty at 4:31 — one of his three minors in the game — but the Catamounts killed it, and enabled him to score.<\/p>\n
\u00e2\u20ac\u0153I just came out of the penalty box, and Reese Wisnowski made a nice play, didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t ice the puck, and I just came out two-on-one. [Jonathan] Higgins drove the net really well, and I just shot it low blocker,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d explained Vock.<\/p>\n
\u00e2\u20ac\u0153We had good net drive,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d said Sneddon. \u00e2\u20ac\u00a6 That\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s kind of [Vock\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s] patented move to cut across the tops of the circles and be patient, get the goalie to move and then shoot.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n
Northeastern wasn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t able to get many quality chances in the third, and the eight shots that it did get to Fallon, he turned aside.<\/p>\n
\u00e2\u20ac\u0153I think we\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve got to come up with a way to penetrate the middle third of the ice on them,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Cronin said. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153They\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re a stingy team. They try and squeeze the enthusiasm out of you with second and third shots in that paint area because they defend so well. And they clear pucks well, they don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t mess around, they get the puck and it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s out of that area quickly.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n
\u00e2\u20ac\u0153Bad turnovers, bad coverage,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Sneddon said of the Catamounts\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 early play. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Our defensemen, I think, had some jitters early on. I think we got better at moving the puck [as the game progressed], but I think we had some early jitters back there and made some poor plays, poor decisions with the puck. So, there are areas that can certainly improve, and we need to improve tomorrow night, because Northeastern will play their hearts out like they did tonight.<\/p>\n
With the win the Catamounts (15-13-7) improve to 11-4-2 in their last 17 games.<\/p>\n
\u00e2\u20ac\u0153The strength of our team as of late has been mistake management.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Sneddon said. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153So when a team has possession, we don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t panic, we block shots, we do the little things \u00e2\u20ac” [win] net-front battles \u00e2\u20ac” those are all strengths of our team and have been strengths of our team during this second half.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n
Vermont and Northeastern (15-17-3) play the second game of their series Saturday at 7 p.m.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Vermont goaltender Joe Fallon made 20 saves to record his 20th career shutout, and sophomore Colin Vock scored the game\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s only goal as the Catamounts took Game 1 of the Hockey East Quarterfinals, 1-0, over Northeastern Friday at Gutterson Fieldhouse. The shutout is the third in six games for Fallon, who ranks second all-time in […]<\/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:\/\/www.uscho.com\/recaps\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8868"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uscho.com\/recaps\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uscho.com\/recaps\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uscho.com\/recaps\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uscho.com\/recaps\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8868"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.uscho.com\/recaps\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8868\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uscho.com\/recaps\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/22374"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uscho.com\/recaps\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8868"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uscho.com\/recaps\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8868"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uscho.com\/recaps\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8868"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uscho.com\/recaps\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=8868"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}