To a man, each William Paterson hockey player wanted vengeance against the Lehigh University Mountain Hawks on Nov. 9 for eliminating them in the ACHA semifinal playoff game, ending the Pioneers 2023-2024 season.
Justice was half-served as the Pioneers skated away with one victory of a weekend two-game series. William Paterson wanted to sweep Lehigh in at the Pioneers’ home barn at the Ice Vault in Wayne. Unfortunately, WP could not overcome the Mountain Hawks’ dominating performance last Saturday.
Despite being outworked in the first period, the Pioneers went to the locker room with a 1-0 lead on a dynamic play between Matthew Barbieri, who swooped in behind the Lehigh net and dished a perfect pass to Austin Teats flying into the slot for a quick snapshot goal, his 17th of the season.
Lehigh’s offense was dominating, pressuring the Pioneers, with considerable offensive zone time, but goalkeeper Kevin Brennan had a sparkling period keeping the Mountain Hawks off the scoreboard.
The second period started with some sloppy play by both teams, each not finding any rhythm in the game.
Soon thereafter, the game changed dramatically when Lehigh’s Mason Goldstein took a two-minute minor penalty and during the ensuing Pioneer powerplay, Luca Filocamo lost control of the puck which led to an easy short-handed goal by Lehigh defenseman Ray Berezniak, tying the game at one apiece.
The short-handed goal seemed to ignite the Mountain Hawk team who went on to score two more goals. The Pioneers were back on their heels as Lehigh capitalized on a 2-on-1 rush. Lehigh winger Luke Macanka drew William Paterson defenseman Vincent Stoffel to him then deftly passed to wide-open right winger, George Tsoumpariotis for a top-right-shelf beauty.
The final goal of the second period came from a scrum in front of the WPU net where the puck found Lehigh forward Ferdinand Burghart, which he stuffed into the net leaving the Pioneers heads hanging dejectedly.
As the period ended, things got testy between the teams as William Paterson became frustrated with their performance.
Starting off the third period, William Paterson played with significant urgency as they were able to maintain some offensive zone time, but nothing translated into a goal until the Pioneers drew two successive penalties from the Mountain Hawks. With a Pioneer 5-on-3 powerplay, WP capitalized when Thomas Swartwout lifted a wrist shot over Lehigh goalkeeper Ben Speyer’s left shoulder.
The celebration did not last long however, as Lehigh rushed the puck up the ice after the ensuing faceoff and scored to acquire once-again a two-goal lead.
In a continuation of the aggressive finish to the second period, the teams were involved in multiple scrums and one brawl where Lehigh’s Ted Justicz and William Paterson’s Giovani Russo threw punches.
Despite William Paterson’s physical pushback, they could not muster any further points.
Lehigh put the game out of reach with a shorthanded empty-netter from Zach Gruber, ending the game with a 5-2 victory for the Mountain Hawks.
Emotions carried over even after the buzzer sounded where the tensions between Russo and Justicz continued in the handshake line in which the refs had to intervene to break up another near brawl.
In retrospect, the WP players looked at last weekend as a glass-half-full scenario as they did beat Lehigh in the opening weekend game.
The Pioneers look to put this loss behind them as they face Indiana University of Pennsylvania in a weekend series on Nov. 15-16.
