“Wins do not come easy at this point in the season,” said junior forward Ted Vickers.
After a hard-fought first two periods, the score stood at 0-0 despite the Jeffs’ outshooting the Jumbos 35 to 14.
“Despite what the standings implied, we knew that Tufts was going to be a challenging game,” said senior defenseman Rylan Burns. “They have excellent goaltending and we knew that it was not going to be easy to get on the scoreboard … We were pretty inconsistent in the first two periods which put us in a dangerous situation. You never want to let a team like that hang around.”
Although the Jeffs allowed Tufts to hang around in the first two periods, goalie Cole Anderson ’11 came up big in net for the Jeffs, stopping 14 shots and preventing underdog Tufts from gaining any confidence by scoring first against the NESCAC’s top team.
“Cole played great in net. He made really big saves when we needed him to,” said sophomore forward Trip Wray.
Thankfully, the Jeffs managed to rally in the third and netted four goals to win the game, defeating the Jumbos 4-1. Burns put his team on the board six minutes into the third off assists from classmates Will Collins and Brendan Powers and the Jeffs finally seized the momentum of the game. Less than 30 seconds later, Ted Vickers capitalized on a three-on-two break to make it 2-0. Later, sophomore Matt Rhone made the score 3-0 off assists from Luke Arnold ’11 and Joel Covelli ’09.
Tufts netted its only goal of the game 14 minutes into the third after Anderson made a stellar save on the first shot and rebound but failed to get hold of the second rebound. Only two goals down at this point, Tufts decided to pull their goalie to get an extra skater to rally to tie up the game.
Moments later, however, Amherst’s Trip Wray’s great shorthanded play caused a turnover and he picked up the puck and skated it out to the red line. He aimed for the empty net and scored. His goal would solidify the win for the Jeffs and make the final score of the game 4-1.
Next weekend the Jeffs face off in a semifinal matchup against the Trinity College Bantams, the defending NESCAC champions.
“Trinity is a great team and I am sure they have improved over the course of the season since we last met, but we have come a long way as well. I know that when our team is focused in and fired up there are few teams that can stop us,” said Burns.