It's just not right having baseball, football and hockey on the same night ... hockey can wait a couple. Nevertheless, great crowd for a home opener ... near 1800. Game was clean and, well officiated.
Oswego has a veteran team with only 3 freshmen on the roster distributed tonight at the game. Beckwith looked stellar. Got beat high glove on a perfect shot, and never saw the 2nd through traffic. Laganiere is a pretty good player of hockey.
This is as skilled an EC team that I can recall since the early 90s. Great combination of size, speed, handling and ice savvy. Having been on the ice for only a week, the coordination isn't there yet, but it improved dramatically during the course of the game. Goaltending will be an issue this season. Neither tenders is Tuttle.
Lines were MacLean (Tabor) Clewlow and Willard; Vaillancourt Willer and Consorti (Niagara); Shrank Sanders and Herold (BC); Strale (Sweeden) Archambault (PQ) and Kourtoglou (PQ). These are four brand new combinations, so they're still feeling each other out, but defending four quality lines will give teams with less depth fits. Willer and Sanders were all over the ice tonight ... obviously been conditioning all summer.
OSU does a real good job of controlling the puck in their offensive end, but Elmira dominated several long stretches of the game at the end of the first and second periods, and the beginning of the third. Once the lines begin to gel, the scoring will follow. Other than the first weekend jitters and accompanying disorganization, I'm very optimistic.