Air Force won a pair of hard-fought games against Army West Point to retain a share of first place in Atlantic Hockey with Canisius. Here are the pluses and minuses of the series as well as the three stars.
Plus
The Falcons muted the Black Knights’ power play, going 8 for 8, including 6 for 6 Saturday.
Minus
The Black Knights held the Falcons’ power play off the scoresheet in all six of their tries, including five on Saturday.
Plus
Air Force overcame injuries to four regulars – forwards Ben Kucera, Matt Pulver and Matt Serratore and defenseman Jonathan Kopacka – to win a physical series. Senior co-captain Johnny Hrabovsky returned to the lineup and played as well as he has all season.
Minus
From the sounds of things at Monday’s press conference, none of them might play at Bentley this coming weekend. Kopacka has a broken ankle, Pulver is having shoulder surgery Thursday, Serratore is in concussion protocol for the second time this season and Kucera is recuperating from an upper-body injury and might be the closest to being back.
Plus
Ledford, Tomlak, Jordan Himley and Evan Feno continued their recent hot streaks.
Minus
Since the start of December, the Falcons have exceeded three goals just three times in 14 games, so their margin of error isn’t huge. Fortunately, their goaltending has allowed more than two goals only twice in that span.
Three stars
- Shane Starrett – The sophomore goalie time and again made timely saves to keep the Falcons in a game or keep them ahead.
- Tyler Ledford – The junior scored a clinching goal Friday and a go-head goal Saturday, both via hard work. He outraced a Black Knights player Friday to get a puck into the empty net and then won an offensive zone draw and went to the net to deflect the puck in on Saturday.
- Dan Bailey and Phil Boje – The defensemen initiated a lot of offense in both games. Bailey’s seeing-eye goal Saturday gave AFA some momentum and his point shot in the third period was deflected by Brady Tomlak for what proved to be the winning goal. Boje fired the shot that Ledford scored on Friday and earlier set up Jordan Himley’s winning goal.
