Boston, MA – In the second game of a double dip for our Director of MassNZ, we made the drive into Boston to catch the season opener at Warrior Ice Arena between the home team Catholic Memorial Knights and the road team the Belmont Marauders. This promised to be one of the marquee matchups of the day featuring two of the teams we noted in our D1 Season Preview as top teams in the MIAA. The resplendent NHL practice digs non-withstanding, we got right down to business upon arrival.
In the first period it was a battle of two different styles as CM was looking to do damage in transition whereas Belmont was more looking to dump and chase. CM had the bulk of the chances throughout the period but Belmont did an excellent job of covering up Knights players in the house and using their sticks to deny centering feeds. CM used their speed and puck skill to ensure Belmont possessions were one-and-done for the most part. Both teams had good scoring chances but neither was able to crack the scoresheet, we would have to wait 15 more minutes to see who would draw first blood.
In the second period, it was more of the same as both teams were engaged physically and battling hard for their ice. The only real difference was that CM began turning up the heat with more sustained pressure and the shot totals were rising by the minute as the clear directive was “shoot from anywhere”. Full credit to freshman netminder Ethan Bauer who kicked out every shot he faced until one finally eluded him nine minutes in. He stopped a shot in the slot and the rebound that followed it, but senior RJ Donahue found a loose puck out of sight behind a CM player and he deposited it to give the Knights a 1-0 lead. The onslaught of shots continued as the period wore on and CM was able to create several turnovers on the Belmont breakout. Bauer stood tall the rest of the way and we finished the frame with a 1-0 score with 17 minutes remaining to determine a victor.
In the final stanza, we inadvertently realized we had tuned in to the Connor Fryberger Show, a favorite of the CM faithful and the runtime was a palatable 17 minutes. It all started five minutes into the frame, Belmont and CM were trading chances early until a Belmont defender broke his stick and skated like the wind to the bench to replace it. In the process, junior forward Morgan Lenehan grabbed a puck below the goal line and whipped it to the tape of Fryberger on the back door who tapped it home before the D could get over to cover: 2-0 Knights. It turned out that Belmont had a response two minutes later as junior captain Adam Bauer broke into the attacking zone with a defender on his back and dished the puck to the royal road trailer in sophomore forward Leo Packard to cut the lead to 2-1. The freshman goalie Bauer continued to stand on his head facing a barrage of CM shots and he kept the Marauders in the game until a heads-up play by Fryberger proved to be the dagger. A faceoff in the attacking zone led to inspiration as he took a shot on the draw and snuck it through Bauer before he could get set: that made it 3-1 CM. About 20 seconds later, CM added another as junior forward Cameron Reed fired a shot from the point that pinballed around off a couple of bodies and somehow found its way past Bauer. This produced a fair amount of confusion for us as the goal was announced in the arena as a hat trick for Fryberger despite the puck looking like it hit off a Belmont body before it hit the back of the net. Regardless, that gave us our final score: 4-1 Knights.
Three Stars:
- F Connor Fryberger, Catholic Memorial
- G Ethan Bauer, Belmont
- F Morgan Lenehan, Catholic Memorial