Cadets put up a good fight against 'Big Green'

Men's ice hockey fell short 3-1 to the Division 1 Dartmouth Big Green last Sunday in a close game.

"I thought we played a very hard fought game, there was a few penalties at the end. I thought our team played very well in the second period; we got good momentum going, we had some good chances with the 5-on-3 at the end but we just could bury it," said head coach Mike McShane.

The Cadets had no problem skating with Dartmouth; perhaps the only noticeable difference was the size of the teams. Norwich had a much smaller, faster team, while Dartmouth had very large and skilled players, according to McShane.

Tory Allen scored his first goal of the season on the power play from Shawn Baker in the second period to tie the game 1-1.

"I didn't notice that much of a difference in the game other than they were much bigger than the majority of teams in our league. I thought our team played very well, despite receiving some bad calls by the refs," said Blake Forkey, 21, a junior biology major from Boca Raton Fla.

The Cadets were very undisciplined taking a total of eight penalties, and Dartmouth made no mistake by capitalizing on the power play.

"The referees in the game were absolutely terrible, I don't think we got one good call all game. That's what you have to expect going into another team's arena though," said Kyle Thomas, 21, a junior from Waltham, Mass.

The Cadets got lucky in the third period when a Dartmouth player received a five-minute major boarding penalty, a game misconduct, which put the Cadets on the power play for the remaining four minutes of the game.

"That happens sometimes, you don't get the breaks and you just have to regroup and move on," said McShane.

Parker Caroll, a sophomore from West Chester, Pa., was the starting goalie for the Cadets. He kept the game close and helped give life to the Norwich skaters by coming up with many key saves throughout the game, emphasized McShane.

"Most of our players actually wanted to go to a Division I school, so it was very interesting to finally play against one and see what the competition was like. I didn't feel like we were out of place at all, we could have won that game," said Chris Duszynsky, 22, a sophomore sports medicine major from Okotoks,Alberta.

After two periods of play there was very few shots on net from either team. The defensive end of both teams played a very tight game, not allowing the forwards to get off many shots on net. There were a total of 30 shots in the entire game, which is quite low for a college level game, according to McShane.

"They might have been a little bigger than us but they weren't better. The refs made some bad calls and we failed to capitalize when we had our chances on the power play. But overall I think everyone played well being it was the first game of the year," said Tory Allen, 23, a junior business major from Davidson, Saskatchewan.

The Cadets had many chances to come back in the third period with many 5-on-3 and 5-on-4 power plays. But they came up scoreless.

"Tory ended up getting a nice goal on the power play but I think our team needs to focus on finishing more. We moved the puck well, we just had a difficult time finding the back of the net," said Tim Houston, 21, a junior civil engineering major from North Andover, Mass.

None of the Cadets ever played a game against a Division I hockey team so it was something new for every player, said McShane

Though it was an away game, the faithful Norwich fans traveled to the game.

"It was nice to see that the majority of fans in the stands were in fact ours. They came down early and had tailgate BBQ in the arena parking lot. So it was comforting to see them when we got off the bus," said Shawn Baker, 23, a senior criminal justice major from Mont –Laureier, Quebec.