The Suffield Wildcats took down the defending CCC Champs Wednesday, December 18th with an 8-4 win that put them in 4th place in the standings early on in the season.
The Girls Varsity Hockey team took on the East Catholic Storm last month for their second game of the season. Stakes were high the evening of the game as this was a must win for the Wildcats to help their standings. The game took place away from the Wildcats home rink at Newington Arena at 4 o’clock. Players had to rush to the game from their school in order to be on time for this important game.
Before the game, Suffield coaches and players reminded each other of one player on the opposing team: Lili Ficaro. Lili added a long list of accomplishments to her resume last year including all conference, all state and player of the year for the state of CT. Players and coaches discussed strategy including how they were going to keep an eye on her during the game and how they were going to make sure she did not get an opportunity to score.
The Wildcats started the game off strong with a 1-0 lead with a wrist shot from the face off circle in the defensive zone very quickly into the first period. Minutes later, however, the Storm answered back and tied the game 1-1 with a goal from Ficaro. The Wildcats knew from then they had to make sure that she did not get around everyone and that when she was on the ice they had someone covering her. This strategy seemed to work as the Wildcats scored again leading the game 2-1.
Storm responded, tying the game back up 2-2 with a nice slapshot from Lily Ficaro again. Right before the first period ended the Wildcats were able to take back the lead and make the game 3-2 with an impressive backhand from Riley Shove.
The second period the two teams started to get more chippy towards one another at the end of the period. One of the Wildcat’s players was pinching to keep the puck in the offensive zone while a player from the Storm was trying to break it out. While this was happening the Wildcat player bent down to protect herself from getting hurt and the Storm player was not able to brace herself for the hit. The Storm player went down hurt, holding her knee. The rink was silent as the trainer raced on the ice to go see how the player was doing. The ref penalized the Wildcats player giving the Storm a 4v5 advantage in the final minutes of the period.
The Wildcats tried to play conservative as their top defensemen was in the box, but a flurry of penalties from both sides directly after the original penalty meant players from both teams were sent to the box.The double penalty meant that Suffield was still down a player, but the Storm were not able to do anything with the advantage because of the strong defence of the Wildcats.
Back in the locker room in between the second and third period the Wildcats had to come up with a game plan for the first minute while they were still down a player. The Wildcats came back hard after the break getting another goal. The Wildcats kept the lead but they did not want to stop there. They kept scoring and left the Storm with a big loss as they were able to take the game 8-4. The Wildcats were able to come out of the second game of their season with a big win and hope to carry the momentum throughout the rest of the season.
