LOWELL, Mass. - The UMass Lowell ice hockey (6-11-2, 3-6-1 Hockey East) team fell short, 4-3, against American International College (12-8-0, 8-4 AHA) on Saturday afternoon at the Tsongas Center.
Junior Owen Cole (Dunnville, Ontario) potted his fourth goal of the year in the second period with an assist from sophomore Scout Truman (Lethbridge, Alberta), while fellow junior Matt Crasa (South Setauket, N.Y.) joined the second period scoring club with a breakaway goal off a pass from freshman Jak Vaarwerk (Clarence, N.Y.). Sophomore Mitchell Becker (Rogers, Minn.) grabbed a helper on graduate student Jake Stella's (Karlstad, Sweden) first career goal against AIC in the third, giving him his first assist of the season.
"I thought it was a good hockey game for about 35 minutes for us," said Head Coach Norm Bazin. "Unfortunately, we gave ourselves a big hole, 3-0. They're a very good team, they're well-coached, and we weren't able to catch up, so, we've got some work to do and 2024 can't come soon enough."
The beginning of the game saw minimal interruptions, with only three faceoffs within the first 11 minutes. Despite the River Hawks winning the shots on goal battle, 10-9, in the first period, AIC got on the board first with a Brett Rylance shorthanded goal at 12:29, before scoring their second on a power play at 16:06. Towards the end of the period, senior Brehdan Engum (Burnsville, Minn.) and graduate student Nick Granowicz (Macomb, Mich.) had back-to-back scoring opportunities that were both saved, and both squads went into the first intermission with a 2-0 score.
In the second period, the River Hawks answered back to an early AIC goal with two of their own within 3:20 of each other. Cole won a faceoff in their offensive zone, before collecting a Truman cross-ice pass and burying it from the right side to put the River Hawks on the board. Not long after, the Yellow Jackets hit the post on consecutive shots, and Vaarwerk sent a long-distance pass to Crasa on a breakaway, who sent a shot past the glove of AIC goalie Nils Wallstrom for the squad's second goal, cutting the deficit to one. Sophomore Dillan Bentley had a prime chance to score with just under 3:30 left in the period, catching a Truman pass with his hand in front of the net and getting a shot off, but to no avail, and the game went to the third as a one-goal game.
The River Hawks continued to outshoot the Yellow Jackets in the third, putting up 11 shots on goal compared to AIC's five. Alexander Malinowski scored for AIC just over four minutes into the period, and the River Hawks retaliated with 13 shot attempts, before Stella took a Becker pass from the boards and sniped a wrist shot to the back of the net at 17:39. The squad proceeded to apply the pressure on the Yellow Jackets' defensive unit with five more shot attempts in the final two minutes, but the comeback effort was not enough to tie it up, and the game concluded with a score of 4-3.
Next up, the River Hawks will travel west to Arizona State for the Desert Hockey Classic, where they will open against the University of Nebraska Omaha on Friday, January 5 at Mullett Arena at 5:30 p.m. EST. Depending on the result, the team will either match up with Harvard or Arizona State the next day.
