Men's hockey team dominates season so far

By Paul May
Norwich Guidon Staff Writer

When most people were headed home to their families for Thanksgiving dinner and time away from school, the Norwich Men's Hockey team was in Kreitzberg Arena practicing for their upcoming games, according to the Head Coach.

"It has been a good start so far," Head Coach Mike McShane said. "We played well vs. Connecticut College; I was happy with the effort that the kids put into it."

Norwich started their season by going to Connecticut College and beating them with a score of eight to four.

"With our first game down, we can play a little better," Captain Keith Maurice, a 23 year old senior business major from Barre, Vt., said. "The guys have gotten some of their bugs out and have had the chance to hit someone else, so now they can get to work."

After playing Connecticut College, the Cadets headed to Tufts University in Somerville, Ma. "This is Tufts' first year in the league," McShane said " I feel that Brian [Murphy, Head Coach of Tufts] will do a good job in getting them going."

"I feel our team did really well," Maurice said "the freshmen stepped up big and had a great day."

Center Paul Mattucci, a 21-year-old freshman P.E. major from Peterborought, Ontario, had two goals with one assist. Goaltender Kevin Schieve, a 21 year old freshman sports medicine major from Rocky Mountain House, Alberta, Canada, stopped seven out of nine shots on goal for the day. Norwich had 41 shots on Tufts' goal, and they had made 10.

Vadim Beliaev, a 21 year old undeclared major from Peterborought, Ontario, scored his first collegiate goal at 15:13 on the clock to start Norwich off on a "scoring run" which left them with the score of 10-2, according to Beliaev.

"It seemed like everyone had a goal in the game," Maurice said.

With a 2 and 0 start to their season, Norwich returned home for a few days to practice up for the Primelink Shootout which was held in Potsdom, NY, on November 23 and 24. The teams that played in the shoot-out were Norwich, Middlebury College, Plattsburgh State College, and Potsdom State College.

"We have our work cut out, for we played Plattsburgh State College, defending national champs, in the first round," McShane said. "We worked our guys hard the past week to get them ready for Plattsburgh."

Going into the game Plattsburgh had played more games than Norwich. "Which might have given them an advantage," Marshall Lee, a 23 year old, junior communication major from Calgary, Alberta, Canada, said. "We came to play, and we were ready for them."

Lee scored the first goal for the Cadets with assists from Phil Aucoin, a 20-year-old sophomore business major from Chelmsford, Ma., and Chris Fuss, a 21-year-old sophomore from Prince Albert, Canada.

The game went into overtime and remained there until Lee, in the second overtime, scored the winning goal to put Norwich 3-2 over Plattsburgh. Norwich had 41 shots on goal, and Plattsburgh had 36 shots on goal.

The next team Norwich had to play was local rival Middlebury College. "We could not go into this game with our head in our backsides," Aucoin said "we had to play smart hockey, and we did."

Randy Hevey, a 21 year old junior business major from Chicopee, Ma., was the goaltender against Middlebury College; he had 27 shots on him, and he only let through one goal. Norwich attempted 31 shots on Middlebury and made five of them.

McShane had one goal for this weekend, and that was to make sure that the Norwich Cadets would do better in this tournament than they did last year. "I feel we did a great job this weekend," McShane said.

"Being undefeated, now we have to make sure that we don't get big heads and play dumb," Maurice said. "We have started out so well, and I want to keep up the good work."

Currently, Men's Hockey is 8-0 and ranked number 1 in New England with the Times Argus Invitational coming up on Dec. 29 and 30.

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