Box Score

Stamford, CT – The No. 5 seeded EC Men's Hockey team struggled all around falling to the No. 4 seed Manhattanville College 9-1 Wednesday evening at Terry Conners Rink in the First Round of the ECAC West Men's Hockey Tournament. The Valiants will move on to the ECAC West Tournament Semifinals and improve to 14-9-3, while the Soaring Eagles finish the season at 10-16-0.

From the opening faceoff, the Valiants came out strong playing with fire and a desire to win. In the first period they outshot the Soaring Eagles 22-3 and registered the game's first two goals. At the 9:16 mark Scott Hudson put it past Darren MacDonald '13 for the opening score. At the 14:01 mark the Valiants stretched out the lead to 2-0 when Louie Balzano put it into the back of the net, while Brendan Turner and Paul Allen Bamberg assisted. About two minutes later the Soaring Eagles were able to get its only score of the night when Brian Depp '16 found the back of the net with Carter Shinkaruk '16 and Erick Eriksson '16 helping out on the goal. 

In the second Manhattanville continued to dominate outshooting EC 22-7 and scoring four more goals in the period. The first score came at the 4:56 mark when Mark Rivera found the goal. Less than a minute later Turner put it into the back of the net for the 4-1 lead. Less than four minutes later Brett Skalski added a score to make it 5-1 in favor of the Valiants. With three seconds left in the period Kevin Struempfler put it into the back of the net for the 6-1 lead.

In the final period of play the Valiants outshot EC 11-6, while scoring three more goals to secure the win. Turner scored his second goal of the game at the 2:03 mark on a Manhattanville power play. 52 seconds later Ron Smith put it into the goal to make it 8-1. Turner ended the scoring for the Valiants with a final short-handed goal at the 13:01 mark.

MacDonald and Ryan deMelo '15 split time in net for EC. MacDonald played about 43 minutes making 32 saves, while deMelo played about 17 minutes in net making 14 saves. Alex Scola played all 60 minutes for Manhattanville making 15 stops.