Shannon Welch/Photo Editor
The men’s hockey team lost in its first-round playoff game against the third-seeded Trinity Bantams in the third consecutive meeting between the Route Nine Rivals. Wesleyan and Trinity split their home-and-home series on the final weekend of the regular season, so the teams were very familiar going into their third straight game together.
Despite holding two different two-goal leads over the course of the game, Wesleyan allowed three straight goals spanning the final seven minutes of regulation and the overtime period, finally succumbing to the Bantams with 2:02 left in the extra frame.
Trinity jumped out to an early lead in the first period, when Jeffrey Menard scored sooner than three minutes into the game. Wesleyan tied it up early in the second period, though, when Donald Kleckner ’13 scored on a power play off a Tommy Hartnett ’14 rebound. Off of a solid defensive possession, Terence Durkin ’16 scored his second goal of the year to take the lead 10 minutes later, putting home a sharp wrister from the circle that found its way inside the post. Wesleyan’s transition offense had Trinity scrambling for much of the period, withstanding 11 Bantam shots and taking 17 themselves.
The Cardinals looked as though they could take a two-goal lead at the 18-minute mark of the second period. Hartnett had a one-on-one and beat the Bantam defender, giving himself a straight shot at the goalie, but Trinity netminder Benjamin Coulthard played Hartnett’s backhand-to-forehand move perfectly, making a nice kicksave and preventing the insurance goal.
With just 11 seconds remaining in the period, though, Hartnett had another chance. A flurry of offense from Wesleyan resulted in a no-angle shot from Keith Buehler ’14, creating a juicy rebound for Hartnett. He pounced on the chance and gave Wesleyan a 3-1 lead with just 20 minutes remaining.
Trinity pulled momentum back in its direction on a power play goal from Conor Coveney, but Wesleyan pulled back out to a two-goal lead at eight minutes in the third period. Ryan White ’13 put in work on the defensive end and broke up a Trinity chance, feeding the puck out to Buehler between the circles to put the lead back to 4-2 in favor of the Cardinals. That, however, was Wesleyan’s last shot of the period. Zach Lombardi cut the lead back to one for the Bantams after crashing the crease on a rebound and put a shot past Nolan Daley ’16, who, after a solid first two periods, allowed three goals on eight shots in the third.
After a Wesleyan timeout at 18:47, Trinity decided to pull its goalie before they won the draw in the Wesleyan zone. The risk paid off, though, when Jordan So won the faceoff to Michael Flynn, who passed the puck to John Hawkrigg, and Hawkrigg put home the shot just four seconds after the faceoff. Trinity’s equalizer tied the game at four and pulled the rug out from under the Cardinals, who looked poised for their second playoff victory in three years.
Wesleyan’s chances looked slim in overtime until they drew a penalty 15 minutes in.
The Cards’ best attempt came when Buehler put a shot on net while Coulthard was down on the ice, but the Bantam goalie threw his right blocker up in the air and deflected the shot to preserve Trinity’s chances at victory. Just 70 seconds after Trinity killed that power play, it killed Wesleyan’s playoff aspirations as well. Hawkrigg struck again, this time wrapping a shot around the back of the net past Daley to win the game and send the Bantam faithful home happy.
Wesleyan is graduating 10 seniors this year, including goaltender Glenn Stowell, who stood between the pipes for 51 games in his Cardinal career, and Nick Craven, who was second in the league in points and led the NESCAC in power-play goals in his final collegiate season. Craven also recently signed a contract with the Binghamton Senators, the minor league affiliate of the Ottawa Senators of the NHL.