Not a Win, Not a Loss, Not Enough

On Saturday, the Rams Men’s hockey team ended up tying Nicholas College who is one of the Rams Commonwealth Coast Conference (CCC) rivals. The Rams are 3-6-2, while Nicholas is 6-3-2. The biggest problem with the Rams is that they are falling apart in the division, currently 1-5-2 in the division, and with only eight divisional matchups left, it’s important for them to win more games in the division.   During the first period of the game, the Rams defense was not holding up and often they found themselves struggling to get Nicholas out of the Rams zone. At the end of the period, Nicholas led the game with shots on goal, Nicholas having a total of 12 while the Rams had 9. Suffolk’s own Sean Henry scored the first goal for the Rams, with the assists from Connor Henry and Dominic Rovero. Other than that, the first period wasn’t a great one for the Rams as they headed to the locker room trailing 1-2.   The Rams came back to the ice hoping for a better second period, however, it was more of the same. They still struggled on defense allowing 11 shots on goal as opposed to 9 shots on goal for our Rams. It seemed that Rams goalie Michael Levine was relied on very heavily to help the team pull out a win. Levine is a great goalie, but defense is also very important to a team so it can take a lot of pressure from the goalie so that the goalie will have a less likely chance of letting up a goal. The Rams need to stop committing penalties as well because they often left themselves down a man, even at one point having two penalties having a three on four. The Rams kept the game close with it still being Nicholas in the lead 1-2 heading into the third and final period.   The Rams brought their best performance in the third. They tied the game with the goal from Brendan Heinze getting the assist from Connor Parent. The Rams played much better in the third than they played all game, and they were keeping up a strong enough defense to bring the game into overtime tied at 2-2 .   Overtime was another strong output by the Rams as they held out bringing the game to an end with a tie of 2-2. Michael Levine had 32 saves at the end of the game which are solid numbers for the goalie, but the defense needs to step up and be stronger if they hope to have a winning record by the time this season is over.