November 8, 2008
This was a great game played by both teams today.
Cougars opened game strong and controlled the tempo from the get-go. They kept pressuring and out-shot the opponent by a large margin. Bella opened up the scoring by scooping the rebound off Joshua's shot and beating the goalie through the 5-hole. The Devil's goalie played a marvelous game, had great position, saved the other 13 shots from the Cougars' in the period with style. Meanwhile, the Devils cashed in with the few opportunities they had in the period and scored twice to end the period 2-1.
The 2nd period featured strong defensive plays by the Cougars after the Devil's tuned up the volume and made more offensive plays. Kevin made a few acrobatic saves, but the highlight of the period belonged to Zack - after Kevin made an initial save off a Devil's shot and still stayed down, they got the puck behind Kevin. Zack made a terrific play at the goal mouth to get the the puck out of danger as it was just about to cross the goal line. Adriel made a few good plays to move the puck through the neutral zone. Jack, Nicholas and Christian all played solid defense and kept the Devil's offense in check. But the Devils still got a break to increase their lead as a seemingly harmless shot from 40 feet away somehow got through Kevin's pads.
The 3rd period started with the Devils leading 3-1. All of sudden it was like deja vu all over again for the Cougars - outplaying the opponent but somehow ended up on the short side of the scoreboard. But the Cougars were determined not to let it happen again. After several solid chances saved by the Devil's goalie, the Cougars finally shrank the Devil's lead - Bella skated in from the blue line, made a great move and beat the sprawling goalie with a backhander. She then led an end-to-end rush and beat the goalie on the stick side to tie the score and get her the hat-trick. Now the Cougars had all the momentum going for them. They just kept pressuring and pressuring. Finally the hard work paid off - Rahul stole the puck in the zone and centered it to Aseem right away, who fired a nice shot to put the puck over the goalie's glove to round off the scoring and put the Cougars back in lead.