Birds Take Prey

Oct. 19, 2004

The Gulls hockey squad opened its 2004-05 campaign on a positive note with a hard-fought 4-3 win at home over the Boston Junior Blackhawks on Saturday (Oct. 16). The team's upperclassmen stepped up with big goals from seniors Jay Fall and Joe Dudek, and solid goaltending from junior Jeff Pardue, to preserve the win despite 16 of the game's 28 penalties being called against the Gulls.

Fall opened the scoring with a nifty individual effort less than a minute into the opening stanza. Collecting the puck in the left corner, Fall slipped behind the net and took advantage of a sliver of open space in the slot, snapping off a quick backhander that beat Blackhawk goalie Brandon Bonham high over his blocker. Minutes later, co-captain Dudek made it 2-0 Endicott. Intercepting the puck at the offensive blue line, Dudek sprung past the Blackhawk defense and with a lightning quick shift stuck a backhander into the net for a breakaway goal.

At the 15:39 mark, the Blackhawks cut Endicott's lead in half, when DJ Branagan, parked at the right hash mark, capped off a nice tic-tac-toe passing combination to ring up a power play goal. The Gulls nearly got their 2-goal lead back with seven seconds left, but Bonham made a sparkling sliding stop of Endicott's Mike Manfredi at the doorstep. That save seemed to energize the Blackhawks at the beginning of the second period, and the Boston squad capitalized quickly on an Endicott defensive miscue to bury a 2-on-1 break past a lunging Jeff Pardue to knot the score at 2-2.

Midway through the second stanza, the Gulls edge ahead after sustained pressure in the Blackhawk end. Freshmen defenseman Jeff Lallier snapped a butterfly shot from the left point that eluded Bonham for his first goal as a Gull. Again, though, the Endicott lead was short-lived, as the Boston's Chris Lusso broke free from a scramble in front and fired a wrist shot from the right face-off dot that broke between Pardue's body and right arm to tie the game at 3-3. The Gulls, however, weren't finished. As the clock ticked down, Dudek drove hard down the left side of the ice, and fired a laser high over Bonham's glove into the top corner of the net for the game-winner with seven seconds left.

The third period saw both teams trading penalties but no goals, as Pardue and the Gulls young defensive corps, including Lallier, Mike Ripley, Scott Vaughn, Mike Feeheley and Derek Gagnon, shut the door on the Blackhawks and sealed the Endicott win. The Gulls also got huge penalty killing efforts from co-captain Adam Partaledis and Mike Tonucci to secure the victory.