Week one of the 07-08 Cardinal Hockey season is in the books. The Cards came out of this past weekend with two solid wins (5-1 & 6-2) over the Morrisville Mustangs.
I also want to mention two returning players that I thought played well this weekend. CJ Tozzo and Mike Baccaro. CJ Tozzo was all over the place this weekend. He was flying around out there and he works hard every single shift. CJ should have an excellent senior campaign. Another player that seems to have had a rebirth if you will is Mike Baccaro. Coach Emery talked about Mike’s play on Behind the Bench. According to coach, Mikey has a whole new attitude this season. It shows. Like CJ, he was out there every shift giving 110%. How can you not root for a guy like that?
Tip of the Hat:
Hats off to Coach Emery, who picked up his 399th win on Friday night. Looking forward to seeing him get 400 this Friday!
Hats off to Nick Rolls. Rockin’ Rolls was named the SUNYAC’s Player of the Week.
Hats off to Josh Obercon. He did a great job with the student turnout on Friday night. It was nice to see a legit student section. Unfortunately, there was a drop off in attendance on Saturday. Still, I am sure Josh is working on getting the students ready and pumped for the coming contest against the Bears.
Enough about this past weekend. As I was looking through the media guide, I noticed that the players favorite NHL teams were listed. As a diehard Buffalo fan, I was a little disappointed to see only two Sabres fans on the team. Worse was the fact that the top two teams among the players were the Rags and Leafs.
Here is the complete break-down:
New York Rangers 6
Toronto Maple Leafs 5
Detroit Redwings 4
Montreal Canadians 4
Buffalo Sabres 2
LA Kings 2
Edmonton Oilers 2
Boston Bruins 1
New Jersey Devils 1
Calgary Flames 1
Look Ahead:
The Cards play one more game before they take off on a five game road trip. The Bears of Potsdam State will invade the Stafford Ice Arena this Friday night at 7PM. The Bears are coming off a weekend split with Adrian College in MI. The Bears were shot down 9-1 in the Friday contest, and they escaped with a 6-4 win on Saturday. According to those at the games this weekend, the only reason they won on Saturday was because of the stellar play of the Bears goalie Rick Miller. He stopped 40 of 44 shots in his first collegiate game. Miller did not play in nets for the Bears’ 9-1 shellacking on Friday night.
On paper Plattsburgh is the better team. However, how many times have we seen a goalie come into town and steal a game from the Cards? Miller has the ability to do that. Also, the Bears ALWAYS play their best hockey against Plattsburgh. It should be a good game. Hopefully the fans will turn out in good numbers. This will be your last chance to catch the team at home until the PrimeLink Great Northern Shootout.
See you at the rink!
Bill-R-
I thought our best forwards this past weekend were freshmen. Dylan Clarke, Kyle VanderMale, & Eric Satim entered the season with a lot of hype, and I thought they delivered. All three scored goals, with Clarke getting two. On Saturday night, Morrisville could not contain the C.V.S. line. This line has the potential to be a top line in all of division III, and teams are going to have a hard time defending against them. As Rob Knowles pointed out in Saturday’s broadcast, Clarke and Satim are really good with handling the puck in really tight spaces. VanderMale is really good in open spaces. On Saturday, he made a great play that led to him scoring on a break-away. As many Cardinal fans may recall, scoring on the break-away was something the team had problems with last season. It was nice to see the team get a break-away goal in the first weekend.
