Early Goals and Broken Glass Lead Ice Pack to Victory

In the inter-conference matchup between the defending ACC Champions Charlotte 49ers and the North Carolina State Wolfpack, two early goals for the ice pack allowed the team to hold on for victory as the Wolfpack won 7-5. Both teams showed some aggressive offense which lead to a battle of the goalkeepers tonight, where Joey Hall came out as the victor.

Right from the start both teams’ player very aggressive on the offensive side, not allowing the defense to catch-up.  Within the first two minutes of the start of the game, the Wolfpack’s Banasiewicz and Szarek both scored goals giving the team an early 2-0 lead.  Szarek, who ended up being the player of the game, scored a hat trick for the pack in this offensive shootout. Goals also came from Banasiewicz (2), Anistratov, and Johnson.  

As mentioned before, both teams came out extremely aggressive on both sides of the puck, which led to many penalties and multiple power plays for both teams.  Throughout the entirety of the match, a total of 18 penalties were issued, 11 on the 49ers and 7 on the pack. This led to 5 power play goals (3 for the pack and 2 for the 49ers), a piece of broken glass caused by Kinney of the Wolfpack and a fight that caused Anistratov of the pack and Werner and Toland of the 49ers to be sent off the ice.  The broken glass caused a 33-minute stoppage of game which allowed the 49ers to rest up and come back hot as they scored 3 unanswered goals against the pack.

The last key point to this game was the great game from Joey Hall at goalie.  The 49ers were putting tremendous pressure on Hall throughout the entire game giving him a hard time all night.  One of the key elements of that is that almost half of their goals were off power plays, which mean that the pack were down a man at the time giving the 49ers the advantage, and they capitalized on that advantage.  But, Hall was able to hold out and keep the Wolfpack ahead, giving the team the victory over their conference opponent.

With this victory the Wolfpack move to 10-0-0 on the season and 6-0-0 in the conference.  Their next game will be November 9th at Delaware for a non-conference matchup.