SPRINGFIELD - With time winding down on a five-minute major power play for No. 1 American International College in the third period of Saturday night’s Atlantic Hockey Championship game versus No. 4 Canisius and the game tied at two, it was looking increasingly likely that the Griffs were headed towards a momentum-shifting penalty kill.
AIC redshirt sophomore Chris Theodore had other ideas, as he used his skate to settle a loose puck with two seconds left on the man advantage and fired a shot past Canisius goaltender Jacob Barczewski to give the Yellow Jackets a 3-2 lead.
Despite the Griffs continuing to push for an equalizer, AIC’s defense hung on, with a pair of late empty net goals for Chris Dodero and Zak Galambos sealing a 5-2 Yellow Jackets win for their second consecutive conference championship and an automatic berth in the upcoming NCAA tournament.
The selection show will be on ESPNU at 7 p.m. on Sunday, when AIC learns who it will be playing and where.
All season long, the Yellow Jackets coaching staff has been encouraging Theodore to find his way towards the goal when they’re up a man.
In their biggest game of the season, Theodore answered their request in the biggest way possible.
“On that goal, coach has been preaching ‘get to the net, get to the net’ and I finally got to the net and it was just a good rebound,” said Theodore of his game-winner. “We kept together with the game plan, and you can just see how good of a third period team we are, just all the stuff we do on the ice and off the ice, the extra conditioning. It really pays off.”
For the second consecutive game, AIC fell behind inside the first 10 minutes of the contest when Canisius’ Kevin Obssuth corralled a loose puck in front of the AIC net and snapped a quick wrist shot past goaltender Stefano Durante for the 1-0 lead.
But as they did in its semifinal matchup versus Niagara, the Yellow Jackets responded.
After being kept out of the net thanks to some stellar saves by Griffs netminder Jacob Barczewski in the first period, AIC wasted no time finding an equalizer out of the first intermission.
1:21 into the second period, the Yellow Jackets tallied their first of two equalizers when an offensive faceoff win resulted in a Dodero shot that deflected off teammate Justin Cole and into the back of the net for the redshirt junior’s second goal in as many days.
It didn’t stay a tie game for long, however, as Canisius answered less than two minutes later when a loose puck was backhanded into the net by Grant Meyer for the 2-1 advantage.
The second game-tying score for AIC came a few ticks under a minute-and-a-half into a hooking minor on Griffs defenseman Logan Gestro, when Elijiah Barriga received a pass in the slot from Theodore and ripped a wrist shot home to level things at two with 5:19 left in the second period.
Yellow Jackets head coach Eric Lang called himself a probability guy after the game, admitting that he knew “what those numbers look like” when his team fell behind but was confident in his players’ abilities.
“Our guys are just resilient and there is nothing better in the NCAA tournament than playing yourself into it,” he said. “I think it’s one of the greatest things you can do and we were probably posturing and jockeying a little bit if things did not go our way tonight but at the end of the day, there’s nothing better because you’re battle tested.”
He added: “(Canisius) came out in the first 10 minutes of the game and tried to throw a big punch at us and had us reeling, but to our guys’ credit we stayed with it and that’s really what we did here.”
The resiliency Lang referred to was evident on the extended man advantage, which was awarded after a successful challenge inside the last two minutes of the second period that saw Canisius’ Mitchell Martan given a game misconduct for a cross check to the head of Dodero.
Even after having several chances denied by Barczewski, AIC kept pushing, and was ultimately rewarded for its efforts.
“Our guys are unbelievable,” Lang said. “We put together a blueprint for how we want the game to be scripted and the buy in is so incredibly high and our execution inside of what we wanna do is incredibly high.”
“That doesn’t make us great coaches,” he continued. “It’s a group that we say jump, they say how high and we’re all-in, all the time. That’s tough to beat.”
While senior defenseman Brennan Kapcheck led all players with three points on three assists, the line of Theodore, Barriga and Tobias Fladeby carried the load offensively, combining for two goals and a pair of helpers in the victory.
“Elijiah’s just really easy to play with, he’s always in the right spots and me and him have built this chemistry,” Theodore said, “and then we have a guy like Tobi, 18-goal scorer in almost every year in college. Just get him the puck and thats’s what we were trying to do.
“I love playing with these two guys, I love playing with this team and we’re gonna make some noise in this tournament.”
Kapcheck, one of five seniors on the team, credited the camaraderie built throughout the roster as they get set to try and make some noise in the NCAA tournament,
“Its just a family at this point,” he said. “We can all learn from each other, whether it’s a freshman telling me or me telling a freshman. It’s the same thing, and that’s what AIC hockey is about.”
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