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Recap for games of October 15 & 16
Hat trick is Rizzo’s remedy
Veteran bounces back from an off weekend with
three goals & two assists in first of two wins over
host Portland; Schultz & Chlanda also contribute
The Portland Pirates entered last weekend as the points leaders in the Atlantic Junior Hockey League. They finished it looking more like paper tigers.
Sparked by a hat trick from forward Frank Rizzo (St. James/Suffolk CC) in Saturday night’s opener, the New York Junior Bobcats cruised to a pair of road victories October 15 & 16 and assumed first place in the AJHL standings.
Rizzo, forward Michael Coppola (Old Brookville/Nassau CC) and center Tony Romano (Smithtown/St. Anthony’s H.S.) each registered three goals and three assists on the weekend as the Bobcats improved to 13-1 overall and 8-0 in the AJHL. New York, which also got strong showings from first-year Bobcats Stephen Schultz (Westbury/St. Mary’s H.S.) and Evan Chlanda (Bay Shore/St. John the Baptist H.S.), has outscored its league opponents by a whopping 59-21 margin.
“[Head coach] Aleksey [Nikiforov] told us in the locker room before the game that this was a first-place team, so I was pretty excited to see what we were up against,” said forward Patrick Moriarty (Lloyd Harbor, NY/Nassau CC), who scored and assisted a goal in both Saturday’s 11-3 win and Sunday’s 6-2 victory at the Biddeford (Maine) Ice Arena. “I think everyone was pretty much up for the task, and it was good to see us come out like that.”
Especially Rizzo, who bounced back nicely after totaling just one assist in last weekend’s one-goal victories over the Hartford Wolf Pack and Boston Bulldogs. Rizzo totaled five points on Saturday, netting a goal in each period and adding two assists in the Bobcats’ five-goal final stanza.
“It was good to see Frankie come back into that game and get it going,” said Moriarty, who finished the weekend with two goals and three assists and currently leads the team with 20 assists. “We’re going to need him as a veteran.”
“Last weekend he was a little flat, but Frank played much better this weekend,” added Romano, the team’s top scorer with 19 goals and 34 points. “He started scoring and got off to a good start early on Saturday.”
So did Schultz, who along with defenseman Justin Porpora (Hauppauge/St. Joseph’s College) assisted Moriarty’s ice-breaking goal 4:24 into the first period that gave the Bobcats the lead for good. Moriarty returned the favor twice over the next 20 minutes, assisting a pair of goals by Schultz that increased the lead to 4-0.
The first of those two goals, which came on the power play, gave the Bobcats a 3-0 lead with 7:17 left in the first period. Schultz remembered it well.
“My linemates and I kept the puck deep and proceeded to contain the puck in the offensive zone,” Schultz explained. “I received the puck from Romano and moved up the sidewall, then cycled the puck down to Moriarty, and then I cut down the slot, where Moriarty fed me the puck before I put it over the goalie’s blocker-side shoulder."
Not to be forgotten, however, was the play of Chlanda, who had a goal and two assists on Saturday night. He assisted each of Rizzo’s first two goals – the second of which gave the Bobcats a 5-0 lead midway through the second period – and also scored off an assist from forward Alex Satin (Muttontown/Friends Academy H.S.) to make it 9-3 with 7:51 left in the game.
The forward line of Chlanda, Rizzo and Coppola played well together. It is an interesting combination considering Chlanda served as a waterboy for Coppola and Rizzo three seasons ago, when the two Bobcat veterans were teammates of Chlanda’s older brother Eddie on the Suffolk PAL’s Junior B squad. Eddie now plays forward for the NCAA Division III team at Curry College in Milton, Mass.
“It’s pretty funny that you get to play with kids your brother played with,” said Chlanda, who is tied for fifth on the team with 14 points (four goals, 10 assists). “That’s the joke between us three.”
But despite their lopsided leads, there was no joking around in the Bobcats’ locker room between periods, because Nikiforov was upset that several of his players allowed Portland to push them off the puck and down to the ice.
“They played well, but I don’t like that they don’t play all 60 minutes. They play one period, two periods and a half,” Nikiforov said of his players. “In the middle of the ice, they allowed [Portland] to approach them and bump them and knock them down. That’s a problem.”
It was a problem for which Nikiforov verbally scolded his players, threatening them with a “short bench” should they not start to show more toughness.
“There was one point this weekend where I fell twice during one shift, and Aleksey looked at me and he said, ‘You’ve got to have more respect for yourself,’” recalled Moriarty, displaying his veteran leadership by accepting accountability. “You don’t want to be in a game that you’re winning and then all of a sudden you’re being pushed around by the other team. You have to be prepared at all times… It’s all about focus.”
According to Nikiforov, it’s all about winning the one-on-one battles along the boards and in the corners. In that regard, he was most pleased by the examples set by Coppola and Romano this weekend.
“Tony Romano and Mike Coppola showed them tremendous individual effort from one end of the ice to another,” Nikiforov said, pointing to a particular goal scored by each player in the first period of Sunday’s win.
The first was what Nikiforov called a “beautiful goal” by Romano, who carried the puck from the defensive zone through the neutral zone and, finally, behind the Portland net. With little room to maneuver along the boards, Romano controlled the puck long enough to allow the offense to set up, then skated in toward the left goal post. He faked one shot before burying the puck short-side, top-shelf to even the score at 1 with 12:37 left in the period.
Less than seven minutes later, Satin scored off assists from forward Rob Pfeiffer (Massapequa/Massapequa H.S.) and Porpora to give the Bobcats the lead for good, 2-1, and set the stage for Captain Coppola’s shorthanded savvy.
After Porpora was penalized two minutes for hooking – the first of 10 Bobcat penalties in the game and one of 20 for the weekend – Coppola skated into the corner of the offensive zone to retrieve the puck and kill some time. He slithered his way between three Pirates who were up in his grill and then, as he glided across the crease with two defenders hot on his tail, slipped a shot into the far side to give the Bobcats a 3-1 lead.
Chlanda called it the most important goal of the weekend. “Coppola went to the net strong and set the example for the rest of the team,” he said. “That’s what Aleksey really harped on this weekend.”
Romano explained.
“Aleksey was mad because he didn't like seeing his team getting knocked around by another team,” he said. “We are going to have to learn to battle throughout the entire game not giving up and winning the battles in the corner as well as making the little plays.”
Romano is already used to making the big plays, such as his finish of a back-door feed from Moriarty 3:39 into the second period. The power-play goal gave the Bobcats a 5-1 lead.
Schultz described it.
“Moriarty walked through the slot, faking two shots and then dishing the puck all the way across the ice to Romano, who was on the back door and just tapped the puck in with no one on him,” Schultz said. “Moriarty showed great patience with the puck.”
The scoring sequence was a long time coming for the two formidable forwards.
“Afterward, we joked about how we always work on that play in practice and how Tony always fans on it,” Moriarty said, “so it was a good thing to see him put it home this time.”
It was also a good thing to see the Bobcats put their many penalties to rest, as Portland converted only one of its 14 power-play situations on the weekend. Heck, the Bobcats scored as many goals while they were a man down as the Pirates did while they were a man up.
“Our penalty kill was amazing this weekend,” Chlanda said. “We got the puck out of the zone whenever it was in there.”
And when they couldn’t clear the puck, goalies Doug Danzi (Nesconset/Smithtown H.S. West) and Evan Hyndman (Monument, CO) were usually there to make the save. While Danzi got the victory on Saturday by stopping 18 of 19 shots through two periods, Hyndman earned the win on Sunday by stopping 23 of 24 shots.
Nevertheless, Nikiforov doesn’t want it to come down to that. Against a better team, the Bobcats’ retaliatory penalties will come back to haunt them.
“We took way too many penalties this weekend,” Rizzo said. “We’ve got to work on that a lot. The penalty kill slows the game a lot. It slows the whole flow. With guys in the [penalty] box, the lines just aren’t the same.”
Nikiforov implored his players to retaliate to opponents’ cheap shots by scoring more goals and making clean, hard checks later in the game – not by quickly responding with cheap shots of their own. Assistant coaches Dan Bedard and Boris Bykovsky must see to it that the Bobcats play disciplined hockey against Hudson Valley this weekend, because Nikiforov will be in Ontario, Canada to watch his son and former Bobcat Vlady Nikiforov take the ice for the OHL’s Barrie Colts.
“If they [opposing players] slash you, you go back right away and say, ‘Let’s play hockey.’ That’s why you have referees,” Nikiforov said. “I don’t need Gladiators on ice. I need Knights.”
Rizzo was one of the Bobcats who shined up his armor against Portland.
“It is a little discouraging [to have an underwhelming showing like he had last weekend], but I know coach Aleksey expects a lot out of me and a lot of other players. So when you don’t play your hardest or don’t do what he expects of you, he’s going to sit you down,” said Rizzo, who was benched for most of the Bobcats’ 6-5 win over defending AJHL champion Boston on October 10. “I know that coach Aleksey expects a lot out of me, so I just have to work harder and try to get it done.”
The Bobcats may be getting it done on the scoreboard, but they have yet to put together a full three periods of solid hockey.
“We have to stay in the game for the whole 60 minutes,” Moriarty said. “It’s only going to help us when we’re in games and it’s 6-5.”
“The biggest thing we have to work on is our backchecking,” Schultz added. “Coach Aleksey could not emphasize enough how important our backchecking needs to be if we want to be successful against the more skilled teams.”
And if the Bobcats want to call themselves the best all-around team in the Atlantic Junior Hockey League.
“We have gotten off to a good start,” Romano said, “but there is still a lot of room for improvement.”
That’s a scary thought for the rest of the league.
GAME 1: SATURDAY, OCTOBER 15
1 2 3 FINAL
N.Y. BOBCATS 3 3 5 11
Portland Pirates 0 1 2 3
Goals – NYB: Moriarty (assisted by Porpora, Schultz; 4:24 1st), Rizzo (Coppola, Chlanda; 8:59 1st), Schultz (Moriarty, Romano; 12:43 1st, PP), Schultz (Moriarty, Cantor; 4:17 2nd), Rizzo (Romano, Chlanda; 11:06 2nd), Gold (Coppola, Avila; 16:53 2nd), Coppola (unassisted; 1:03 3rd), DeMayo (Rizzo, Markowitz; 10:23 3rd, PP), Chlanda (Satin; 12:09 3rd, PP), Rizzo (Romano, Coppola; 13:13 3rd), Romano (Rizzo, Porpora; 14:16 3rd); PP: Bouchard (McNaughton; 11:40 2nd), Letellier (Payson, Wilson; 2:44 3rd, PP), Michaud (Payson, Letellier; 7:24 3rd). Saves – NYB: Danzi 18 (19 shots, 40 minutes), Hyndman 10 (12 shots, 20 minutes); PP: Tuttle 29 (35 shots, 40 minutes), St. Hilaire 12 (17 shots, 20 minutes).
GAME 2: SUNDAY, OCTOBER 16
1 2 3 FINAL
N.Y. BOBCATS 3 2 1 6
Portland Pirates 1 1 0 2
Goals – NYB: Romano (assisted by Rizzo, Chlanda; 7:23 1st), Satin (Pfeiffer, Porpora; 14:06 1st), Coppola (Gold; 17:10 1st, SH), Moriarty (Markowitz; 3:27 2nd), Romano (Moriarty; 3:39 2nd, PP), Coppola (Avila; 1:25 3rd); PP: Bouchard (Jones, Tuttle; 0:57 1st), Michaud (Retelle, Letellier; 18:38 2nd). Saves – NYB: Hyndman 23 (24 shots, 30 minutes), Danzi 19 (20 shots, 30 minutes); Tuttle 44 (50 shots, 60 minutes).
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