Well, I have to hand it to Coach Cahoon, he knows exactly what needs to be worked on most with his team.  When I spoke to him last week he mentioned that he felt first and foremost he had to work on play away from the puck and defense to get the goaltenders the help they needed and that nailing down the offense would come later.  Sure enough, especially in the third, we saw tons of players just standing around in the defensive zone and what resulted was the V-Reds netting 3 goals in the course of about nine minutes to take the win.  I think most of the freshmen D looked shaky at times, with the Adam Phillips/Colin Shea pairing looking the shakiest of them all.  The good news is that Paul Dainton looked solid through his first two periods.  Freshman Jeff Teglia struggled a bit, but did make 7 saves in his period plus of play.

Offensively the team looked good and unlike on defense the freshmen were active and really carried the play at times.  Specifically freshmen Branden Gracel, Troy Power, and Mike Pereira stood out, with Pereira scoring a power play goal and Power setting up Danny Hobbs with a nice pass across the slot.  Hobbs was certainly the star of the night, scoring two goals on five shots and giving fans hope that he’ll be taking on a larger share of the offensive load this season.  T.J. Syner was held out of the game for precautionary reasons.

In the end it’s just an exhibition game and while they came away with a loss I think there were a lot of positives to take away from it.  Certainly if the freshmen remain active and aggressive on offense it bodes well for the season.  Dainton seems to have taken up where he left off and is not a worry.  But just as Cahoon said the season’s success will likely come down to play away from the puck and defensive positioning.  UMass has a handful of full practices to try to make progress on that front before heading out to play a very good Minnesota team.

Fear The Triangle Player of the Game
Player of the game goes to everyone who didn’t get hurt yesterday.  Unfortunately that doesn’t include Marc Concannon who went to the locker room in the third or Eddie Olczyk who a friend pointed out didn’t play much if any of the final period or overtime.  Their statuses are unknown.

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Here’s Dick Baker’s recap of the game out of the Republican.

He also has a feature on Branden Gracel.

Baker also has short posts about some of those who attended the game, including the four ex-Minutemen on the Sharks and one of my fellow inhabitants of Section U.

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Elsewhere last night Northeastern lost their exhibition game to Arcadia while UNH tied St Francis Xavier.  BU put in 9 goals against Toronto in their game.