By Rosie Sculco
After erasing 0-3 deficits twice, the Plattsburgh Cardinals men’s hockey team advanced to the SUNYAC championship.
Under head coach Steve Moffat, the Cards (16-10-1, 8-6) have made the SUNYAC tournament every year, including a 2023 championship victory.
This is Plattsburgh’s 33rd consecutive season of SUNYAC tournament play, and the team will be searching for its 25th title in program history.
POTSDAM
The 5th-seeded Potsdam Bears (8-14-4, 6-7-1) hit the road to take on the 4th-seeded Cards in the first round of the SUNYAC tournament on Feb. 26.
Moffat said adversity has been a topic of discussion for the Cards all year and that did not stop at the start of the postseason.
“We’ve been doing it all year, battling adversity, so I think we’re getting pretty good at it,” senior forward and captain Jake Lanyi said.
Both teams came out very physical, but Potsdam owned the first period of play. The Bears took 16 shots and scored three goals.
Potsdam’s Jack Loran gave his team the lead early, after 6:33 of play. Jeremy Quesnel followed with a goal at 11:56. Soon after killing a power play by the Cardinals, Rocco Seery earned his first career goal to put the Bears up 3-0 at the end of the first period.
“We just had to re-group. The best thing that probably could happen is basically they score three goals early because we had 40 minutes to get back into it,” head coach Steve Moffat said.
In a game that featured 39 minutes of penalties, Plattsburgh took advantage of a powerplay situation to begin its comeback.
Junior defender Lonan Bulger put the Cards on the board with his second goal of the season at the 14:30 mark in the second period. Graduate student defender Kevin Weaver-Vitale and first-year forward Shane Bondy each tallied assists on the play.
“Obviously, the first goal was big, and that kind of got us going a little bit. I thought we played a really good second period, and the biggest difference was we gave up 16 shots in the first period. We played better defense that was huge for us,” Moffat said.
The Cards only allowed five shots in the second period.
A score of 3-1 remained into the final period of play before a thrilling three-goal stretch in under 10 minutes that gave Plattsburgh the lead back.
The scoring began as first-year forward Brody Spencer-Ha netted one to put the Cards behind by only one goal at the 15:08 mark. Junior forward Jake Sacratini earned the primary assist, while Bulger added the secondary assist.
Less than three minutes later, Bulger scored his second goal of the night, assisted by senior forward Jagger Benson and junior forward Colin Callahan, to open a brand-new game, landing at a score of 3-3 with little under 6 minutes left to play.
“Just have to take it shift by shift. You can’t score three in one shift, so you gotta work to get the first one and then one at a time, and it worked out,” Lanyi said.
With just 5:42 remaining, first-year forward Patrick Cole received the puck from first-year forward Blake Hall and then shoveled in a shot, giving the Cards a 4-3 lead after trailing for over 40 minutes. Junior defender Spencer Bellina earned the secondary assist.
Cole earned his 10th goal of the season, tying him for second on the team.
“It was so exciting. It was probably the coolest goal I’ve ever scored. Just to put us up by one is huge,” Cole said.
As the Bears took their goalie off the ice for the final minute in return for an extra man, the Cards’ defense remained strong.
Sacratini scored the 5th and final goal of the game after Bulger helped force a turnover, ultimately eliminating Potsdam from the SUNYAC Tournament.
“No matter what the score is, we’re not out of any game. We know we’re capable of putting up four goals in a period. It starts with our coaching, our leadership, keeping us positive and sticking with each other,” Cole said.
CORTLAND
In dramatic fashion, the Cards secured a 4-3 overtime victory over the 12th-ranked and top seeded Cortland Red Dragons, the very team that ended their championship dreams last year.
Last year, the Cardinals hosted the Red Dragons in the SUNYAC championship, ultimately losing in overtime 2-3.
A chance at revenge, the Cards headed to Cortland in the semifinals of the SUNYAC tournament Mar. 1.
“Cortland beat us twice in the regular season, so we knew it wouldn’t be an easy game, but they still hadn’t seen our best, so we were super pumped to be able to play them in their rink,” Sacratini said.
The Red Dragons looked to get a comfortable win, scoring their first goal just 5:08 into the first period of play. They followed it up with another goal with less than a minute left to go, putting them up 2-0 heading into second.
Cortland outshot Plattsburgh 15-7 in the first period.
Similar to Potsdam, the Cards improved their defense in the second period, holding Cortland to nine shots.
However, it was a scoreless period of play for both teams as both goalies made strong saves.
Plattsburgh senior goalie Jacob Hearne made 29 saves in just under 60 minutes while Ronan Mobley made 30 saves for Cortland, ultimately taking the loss in net.
In the third period, the Red Dragons were up 3-0 with under 18 minutes to go.
“Definitely was not ideal going down three goals again, but with our backs against the wall, we’ve proven to be pretty relentless, this team does not have any quit in us,” Sacratini said.
A slashing penalty was called on Cortland with 9:10 left to go in the game. Plattsburgh took advantage of this as junior Colin Callanan rebounded a shot from Sacratini into the back of the net to get Plattsburgh on the board.
Sophomore forward Vlad Pshenichnikov added the secondary assist on the play.
“I looked at my linemate Jake Lanyi, and I did not want this to be his last college hockey game. I know that motivated me to crank my game up a notch,” Sacratini said.
Lanyi, one of two captains, has played for the Cards for four years and will be appearing in his third championship game.
Plattsburgh had the only power-play goal of the evening, going 1-4 on the advantage, while Cortland was 0-3.
“The ref had his hand up for another Cortland penalty. We knew we had another chance on the power play that we had to take advantage of, and we did,” Sacratini said.
Pshenichnikov shot from the face-off circle, scoring to cut the lead to just one goal. Bondy and Weaver-Vitale recorded assists on the play.
Plattsburgh pulled their goalie over the final minutes of play in return for an extra attacker.
With less than a minute left, all odds were against Plattsburgh with Cortland winning back-to-back faceoffs in their offensive zone.
Lanyi took arguably the biggest face off this season for the Cards and won it finding sophomore forward Aaron Catron who scored with about four seconds to spare to send the game into overtime.
“We had all the momentum, getting off the ice at the end of regulation and skating past the Cortland bench. They looked defeated, everyone’s heads were down, they weren’t talking, and we knew there was no chance we were losing,” Sacratini said.
Just 20 seconds into overtime, Weaver-Vitale took a shot toward the net, and Sacratini deflected the puck from the top of the slot and found the top shelf past Cortland’s goalie.
“This is my first year here, but the fact Cortland beat us in the finals in our own rink and seeing how much this game meant to the guys who were here last year it couldn’t have been written up any better being able to beat them in overtime in their own rink,” Sacratini said.
Plattsburgh will head to the SUNYAC Championship to take on the second-seeded Oswego Lakers (15-8-3, 9-4-1) Mar. 8th.
The last 10 matchups between the teams includes a 3-7 record in Oswego’s favor dating from Jan. 2022 to the last time they faced off on Feb. 1.
The game will be an exact rematch of the 2022-2023 SUNYAC Championship, where the Cards won their 24th SUNYAC championship in program history defeating Oswego, 2-1, on the road.
