Boxscore

NORTHFIELD, Vt. – Missing four players due to travel problems and with two skaters lost during the first 30 minutes, the #10 Manhattanville men's hockey team easily could have folded on Friday afternoon against #7 Adrian College. Instead, an undermanned Valiant side put together perhaps its most impressive performance of the season, posting an emphatic 6-2 win over the Bulldogs in game one of the Northfield Savings Bank Holiday Tournament, hosted by Norwich University, at Kreitzberg Arena.

Manhattanville (9-3-1, 1-3-0 ECAC West) advances to tomorrow's championship round with the win, where they will face the winner of today's second game between #4 Norwich and Nichols College on Saturday at 7 p.m. The game will be audio streamed live on WMVL 88.1 FM starting at 6:50 p.m. Adrian (8-3, 7-1 MCHA) will face the loser of today's second game in the consolation game tomorrow at 4 p.m.

Freshman Mike Henrici (North Haven, Conn.) and senior captain Lem Randall (Yellowknife, N.W.T.) both had excellent days for Manhattanville in the win, as Henrici scored the first two goals of his career and Randall posted the first multi-goal game of his career and added an assist for a three-point day. Senior assistant captain Mickey Lang (Reno, Nev.) and sophomore Brett Skalski (Exton, Pa.) also had a goal and an assist each for the Valiants, while sophomore Scott Hudson (St. Albert, Alta.) added a trio of assists as well in his first game in almost two months.

Junior netminder Pierre-Olivier Lemieux (Rimouski, Que.) also had another excellent outing in goal for Manhattanville, making 30 saves to pick up his seventh win of the year.

“I thought it was a very gutsy effort by our team,” head coach Keith Levinthal said. “It has been a difficult week and we had to deal with a lot of distractions.  And then to lose two guys early in the game, it required us to rely heavily on the guys we had – and to their credit, they did a great job.

“Individually, I'm really happy for Mike,” Levinthal continued. “He came back from break with some great practices, and while we enjoyed the two goals he scored, it was stuff other than the goals – penalty killing and hard work on the forecheck – that I was most impressed with today.”

Manhattanville out very strong against an Adrian team that has little experience against nationally ranked programs, scoring twice in the first seven minutes to jump out to an early lead. The scoring started at 3:07 of the first frame, when Skalski took a feed from classmate Ron Smith (North Delta, B.C.) in the high slot and beat Bulldog netminder Brad Fogal for his sixth of the year. Freshman Eric Defelice (Chalfont, Pa.) also recorded an assist on the score.

Less than four minutes later, the Valiant lead doubled thanks to a deft deflection in front by Randall. Hudson won a puck in the corner back to the point for junior Marcus von Sydow (Stockholm, Sweden), whose shot was headed wide of the net before Randall got a stick on it and saw it trickle against the grain and just into the near side for his fourth of the year.

The strong early start was a key starting point for the game, according to Levinthal. “I think it showed them that we were ready to play,” he said. “We haven't always been ready to go the first game after break, but we came out strong this time.”

Adrian got one goal back at the 7:50 mark with Joel Workman's fourth of the year, but the Valiants went into the first intermission with a 2-1 lead thanks to an 11-6 edge in shots after 20 minutes.

The second period featured the same 2-1 score in favor of the Valiants, as the Valiants played well and also received some luck on the way to doubling their lead. Less than four minutes into the frame, Henrici came down the left side and didn't get good wood on his shot, and yet the change of pace was enough to fool Fogal and have the puck slip underneath the pads for Henrici's first collegiate tally, which put the squad back up by a pair.

Momentum seemed to change soon after, as Adrian generated some quality scoring opportunities and scored 1:17 into a five-minute power play to get back within a goal at 3-2.

However, the Valiant penalty kill kept the Bulldogs off the board for the remainder of the kill and then Randall struck again with 37.6 seconds remaining to give his team all the momentum with a 4-2 lead after 40 minutes. Hudson and Lang again did the dirty work by combining to win a puck in the corner, and this time Hudson fired a pass to a wide-open Randall in the slot for a teed-up rocket that beat Fogal for the score.

“It was a big goal, because we played alright for much of the second period but lost a lot of momentum that we built early on,” Levinthal said. “After the goal, we absolutely knew that we were going to win the game headed into the third period.”

With the Valiants holding a two-goal lead headed into the third, Adrian threw everything it had at the Manhattanville defense, and yet it was Manhattanville scoring the only two goals of the frame to account for the final score. At the 11:40 mark, Lang picked the top corner from the slot for his team-leading 13th goal of the year off assists from Randall and Hudson. The scoring was capped with 4:57 remaining, when senior Sasha Romanenko (Kharkiv, Ukraine) sprung Skalski and Henrici for a two-on-one that Henrici put away for his second of the night.