Men's Ice Hockey advances to semifinals with overtime win
New England College’s Simon Laudon-Sorlin (Stockholm, Sweden) scored the game-winner 5:29 into overtime lifting the Pilgrims past the visiting Southern Maine Huskies 4-3 in ECAC East Quarterfinal action on Saturday. With the win the Pilgrims improve to 15-9-2 overall and advance to the ECAC East Semifinals next weekend. With the loss the Huskies finish their season 11-12-3 overall.
Southern Maine would not waste much time getting on the scoreboard as Chris Travis (Scituate, Mass.) would intercept a pass and poke in a shot just 2:40 into the game. The Huskies would extend their lead to 2-0 at the 15:56 mark in the first as Josh Giordani (Quincy, Mass.) would score off a nice pass from Zach Joy (Dover, N.H.) The Pilgrims would finally get on the board as Trevor Turner (Westbank, B.C.) would take advantage of an NEC power-play and net his fourth goal of the season at with just under three minutes remaining in the first.
The two teams would battle evenly through much of the second period before the Pilgrims would net their second power-play goal of the game at the 14:29 mark as Olli Kalliosaari (Hattula, Finland) would score assisted by Turner and Jarkko Leppanen (Tampere, Finland) knotting the game at 2-2.
The two teams would enter the third period still tied at 2-2 but Southern Maine would grab the lead at the 11:15 mark as Dan Rautenberg (Cape Elizabeth, Maine) would score a break-away goal. NEC would not give up as they would respond with just 1:31 remaining in regulation as Bill McGinnins (Williams Lake, B.C.) would put in a loose puck in front of the net, tying the game at 3-3 and forcing overtime.
Southern Maine would pick up a penalty early in overtime but the Huskie defense played tough killing the penalty while being out shot 4-0. The NEC offense would come through as Simon Laudon-Sorlin would come up with the game-winner rebounding in his own shot 5:29 into the first overtime giving the Pilgrims the 4-3 victory.
Picking up the win in goal for NEC was Aaron Harvey (Milford, Nova Scotia) who finished with 18 saves. In goal for Southern Maine was Jamie Gilbert who recorded 30 saves on the evening.
NEC will now host both the semifinals and finals of the ECAC East Tournament as the top three seeds were upset in other quarterfinal action this weekend. The fourth seeded Pilgrims will host two semifinal match-ups on Friday, March 6 and the championship on Saturday March 7.
