With its second-place finish in the American Conference, the Cicero-North Syracuse ice hockey team will get at least one more home game when the Section III playoffs get underway.
In last Monday’s game against Fayetteville-Manlius at the Twin Rinks facility the two programs share, the Northstars did enough to fight its way to a 3-2 victory over the Hornets.
Back on Dec. 27, these two teams met at the Syracuse War Memorial and C-NS won big, 8-1.The rematch was far closer, with exchanges of goals in the last two periods.
Thus, the single goal the Northstars got in the first period ended up making the difference as Jake DenBleyker, Matt Cramer and Ethan Osgood each found the net once, with Robert Mitchell getting two assists and Dan Quick adding a single assist.
F-M got goals from Will Duncanson and Mike Hockenberger, but Jack Doren stopped everything else, recording 27 saves. F-M counterpart Andrew Heyman stopped 32 of the 35 shots he faced.
The game between C-NS and unbeaten, state Division I top-ranked West Genesee was moved from Wednesday to Saturday, after Liverpool would have its own game against West Genesee at Shove Park Friday night.
It actually was scoreless until the second period, when WG took over with a pair of goals and then added two more in the third period to defeat the Warriors 4-0.
That it even was so close was a tribute to the work of Liverpool goaltender Gavin Buza, who frustrated the Wildcats throughout the first half of the game and finished with 48 saves overall. Dan Colabufo scored two of WG’s four goals, with the other two going to Ryan Washo and Dan Holzhauer.
When Saturday night at the Twin Rinks rolled around, only C-NS stood between West Genesee and the completion of an undefeated, untied regular season, and the Northstars had only lost by a 3-0 margin in their first encounter Dec. 15.
Here, though, WG had four goals by the end of the first period, and eventually prevailed 9-2 as eight different players found the net, with only Timmy Winn (two goals, two assists) setting the pace.
All told, C-NS surrendered 61 shots, with Doren making 27 saves and Spencer Coon 25 saves. The Northstars did get one goal in each of the last two periods as Dan Quick assisted on tallies by DenBleyker and Nick Sciore, with Tyler Murray also earning an assist.
Earlier that day, Liverpool had an early lead against Fayetteville-Manlius, only to surrender that advantage before a goal late in the third period forced overtime.
Still, the Warriors lost to the Hornets 3-2 in OT as Connor Boland assisted on goals by Bobby Welch and John Coggiola. Buza made 27 saves as F-M’s goals went to Jackson Denton, Mikkal Tola and Trent McKiven.
