With a trip to Shove Park and another showdown with West Genesee looming, the Baldwinsville ice hockey team would test itself with two tough road games in the last full week of January.
In the first of them, the Bees went to Kennedy Arena last Wednesday night to face Rome Free Academy. Sporting a 9-5 record, the Black Knights proved stingy, but B’ville, saved by its own strong defensive effort, prevailed by a 1-0 margin.
Neither team scored in the first period, but the Bees earned itself more opportunities. And that pressure would pay off in the second period when Ryan Gebhardt, unassisted, flung a shot past RFA goaltender Ethan Siderine at the 4:49 mark.
For the rest of the night, Siderine allowed nothing else, earning 25 saves. Thus, it was up to B’ville’s defense to protect the one-goal margin, which it did with a series of blocks and stops that kept goalie Alex Rose from having to do too much on his own.
Still, Rose stopped all 17 shots he faced, and the Bees successfully killed a third-period RFA power play and preserved the shutout even after Siderine was pulled for an extra attacker.
Having that tough game behind them, B’ville would go to Whitestown Community Center for Saturday’s game against Whitesboro, the leaders in the Division II National Conference.
Once again, the defense proved sensational – but this time around, the offense helped out, too, and the Bees blanked the Warriors 5-0, scoring twice in the game’s first three minutes to seize immediate control, and following up in the second period by scoring three more times in the last four minutes, including tallies from Parker Schroeder and Josh Racha.
These back-to-back shutouts gave the Bees (12-4-1) lots of momentum headed into the West Genesee game, where a road win could mean a share of the Division I American Conference regular-season title. WG won the first meeting 3-1 in December at Lysander Arena.
