Huskies Start Off Season Strong

The New Hampton Men’s Ice Hockey Team started their season off on the road in an exhibition game against Berwick Academy. As the game started, one could see that this was going to be a drastically different game than last year, when New Hampton beat up on Berwick 9-3. Berwick was a much improved team this year and both teams came out skating hard. The game was back and forth in the first period, with both teams working hard, trying to get the rust off from the off-season and build some chemistry amongst their lines.  Ten minutes into the game, with the Huskies shorthanded, Joe Dunlap stole puck from a Berwick player, chipped it past a defenseman and went in all alone on a breakaway. Dunlap made no mistake, sniping short side top shelf to put New Hampton up by one. Thirty seconds later, Berwick struck back on a shot for the right side that fooled Matt Sayles. The rest of the period remained scoreless with neither team creating much offensively. In the second period, the Huskies came out putting the pressure on Berwick and drew an early penalty. Four minutes into the period and thirty seconds into the power play, Bradley Shaw put the Huskies back up on top. Michael Kesselring and Lynden Breen had assists on the goal. The rest of the period saw the Huskies control the play but were unable to find the back of the net, until Jake Dunlap won a puck battle along the wall in the offensive zone. Dunlap fired a shot on net that Alex Grace picked up the rebound from and made no mistake firing the puck in the open net. Andrew Engel played solid in net stopping all shots he faced in the period. The third period was more of a back and forth game with both teams creating chances offensively, to no avail. Eli Curry stood tall in net, stopping all the shots that came his way. The Huskies seemed to get better as the game went on and should be ready to play Bishop College tomorrow at the “Jake” in their first official game of the season.