The Junior Team was looking forward to building off a very strong weekend at St. Andrews College, where the boys saw success vs two very good teams. The Northwood Invitational Tournament is a highlight of the season, but a nasty stomach bug kept several key players out of the lineups and left others weak and tired.
Sophomore Cody Monds (19) and junior Drew Rose (9) celebrate a Monds goal.
To open the tournament the Huskies faced rival St. Andrew’s College who had beaten Northwood earlier in the year. The home team wanted revenge. SAC started the scoring, but the Huskies rebounded quickly. The Huskies got on the board with a pretty pass from behind the net by Cody Monds (Forward, 2020) to Jerkko Ramo (Forward, 2019) who buried the goal in his first game back since injuring his collarbone. Shortly thereafter Monds would get one his own, putting the Huskies up 2-1 by batting a rebound out of the air and into the St. Andrew’s net. The game would go back and forth, still 2-1, until just under 1:30 left in the third period when SAC got a lucky bounce and tied it up at two goals apiece. The three-on-three overtime was packed with scoring chances for both teams, including a Northwood opportunity that bounced off the post and made its way into the neutral zone with time running out. A St. Andrews player collected the puck on a broken play and scored on a breakway with 0.6 seconds remaining in overtime, silencing the large crowd assembled in the 1932 Arena.
In the second game of the tournament, the group would see a tough Boston Jr. Bruins team. The Huskies fell behind earlier, but were able to battle back, with goals coming from Patrick Callahan (Forward, 2018) and Andrew Gilbert (Defense 2019), who scored his first of the year. The Bruins would prevail 5-2.
The Huskies needed to have a short memory and finish the weekend off on a good note.
Sunday morning the squad would face Nichols School for the second time in a week. The Huskies wanted to start fast, score early and not look back. They did just that. With Shane McGrath (Defense, 2018), recently recovered from the stomach bug, starting the scoring. The goals piled on. Stephen Panico (Forward, 2019) netted a hat trick, Will Arquiett (Forward, 2019) added two, while Nate Boak (Defense. 2020, Ramo, and Sam DiBitetto (Forward, 2018) had one apiece. The game ended in a 9-1 win for Northwood, with Jacob Mucitelli ‘19 playing solid between the pipes.
The weekend wasn’t what the boys wanted going in, but there is still a lot of play left. The Huskies will head to Providence College to compete in the Winter Beantown. They look to bring hardware back to Lake Placid.
All photos: Mr. Michael Aldridge
