Boxscore

ASTON, Pa. – Coming off one of its worst losses of the season Friday night, the #5 Manhattanville men's hockey team responded to a challenge on Saturday evening, scoring the final three goals of the game to take down Neumann University by a 3-1 score in a critical ECAC West Conference clash at Ice Works.

The win was a crucial one for Manhattanville (14-4-1, 2-4-0 ECAC West), moving the team out of the cellar and into a three-way tie for third place in the ECAC West with Hobart and Utica. Neumann (10-6-3, 4-3-0 ECAC West) remains in a tie for first with Elmira with the loss.

After being outmatched in almost every facet of the game just 24 hours earlier, it was a different Manhattanville team that took the ice on Saturday night. Not just in the shots department, in which the visitors held a 27-26 edge, but in overall team intensity and execution; in total, it resulted in a much better showing on the scoreboard as well.

Seven different players recorded one point each for the Valiants, led by single goals from junior Bill Silengo (Madison, Conn./South Kent School), sophomore Brett Skalski (Exton, Pa./Des Moines Buccaneers (USHL)) and freshman Louie Balzano (Staten Island, N.Y./New York Apple Core (EJHL)). In goal, junior Pierre-Olivier Lemieux (Rimouski, Que./Neepawa Natives (MJHL)) was tremendous for the visitors, turning aside 25 of 26 shots to pick up his 12th victory of the season.

The first period saw no scoring for either team, but Manhattanville took the play to Neumann at times in stark contrast to last night's contest. The Valiants had a great scoring chance when the visitors caught the home team in a bad line change to sprung Skalski for a breakaway, but his backhander was stopped at the far post by Neumann netminder Matt Tendler.

In the opening frame, both teams fired eight shots by goal, but Tendler and Lemieux both turned aside every shot they faced to send the teams into intermission knotted at zero.

The second period saw three goals, starting on the Neumann side when Michael Rey netted his team-leading ninth of the year from Jordan Zalba and Sean Bianchini at 1:24. But the Valiants got back to even at the 9:57 mark, when Silengo recorded his first of the year. Just as a Neumann power play was expiring, he took a loose puck in the slot and fired it through a screen past Tendler for the score.

Four and a half minutes later, the Valiants assumed their first lead of the evening, as the freshman line of Balzano, Eric Defelice (Chalfont, Pa./Thorold Blackhawks (GOJHL)) and Kyle Hughes (Lake Forest, Ill./Salisbury Prep) combined for a big goal. At 14:22, Hughes and Defelice combined to win the puck in the corner and then fed out in front of the net for Balzano, who wristed a shot that just got through Tendler for his second of the year.

After 40 minutes, Neumann had a 22-20 edge in total shots, but some opportunistic Valiant offense combined with some great saves by Lemieux sent the visitors into the third period with a lead.

Playing from ahead in the third period, Manhattanville kept the pressure on Neumann offensively and that pressure finally resulted in a key insurance goal with 3:25 remaining, as Skalski scored a power-play goal from freshman Adam Young (Edmonton, Alta./Grande Prairie Storm (AJHL)) and senior Sasha Romanenko (Kharkiv, Ukraine/Hebron Academy) to give the visitors some much-needed breathing room – and eventually a key win and a two-game weekend split.

Manhattanville will return home to Playland Ice Casino for five of the last six games of the regular season, beginning with a big two-game weekend series versus Elmira College next weekend. The puck will drop for both games at 7 p.m. on Friday and Saturday night, and GoValiants.TV will have live video coverage of both contests starting at 6:45 p.m.