Despite some concerns in the fall over whether it would play its normal home schedule, the Liverpool ice hockey team will still have its normal slate of games at Lysander Ice Arena during the 2019-20 season.
And the Warriors opened with an impressive all-around effort against visiting Auburn last Tuesday night, leaning on its defense to earn a 1-0 victory over the Maroons.
They stayed scoreless until the second period, when Liverpool broke through as Connor Boland found the net, assisted by Matt Gagnon and Xavier Springer.
That was one of just 10 shots the Warriors managed all night, but its defense contained the Maroons, limiting it to 18 shots, all of them stopped by James Welch.
Good as Welch was here, he was even more sensational in Friday’s opening round of Baldwinsville’s Bobby Conklin Memorial Tournament against reigning state Division I champion Syracuse.
Recording 42 saves, Welch not only kept the Warriors in it, he had a lead most of the way thanks to two goals from Boland and another from Gagnon, who joined Springer and Anthony Bentley in the assist column.
Despite all this, Syracuse tied the late amid a pile of players in front of the net late in regulation, and it stayed 3-3 until a shootout, where the Cougars prevailed.
So Liverpool went to Saturday’s consolation game against Fulton (who lost to B’ville 3-0) and, this time around, rallied to get into yet another shoot-out, where it ended up defeating the Red Raiders.
A rough first period left the Warriors behind 3-1, but it fought back to tie it, 3-3, before both sides got a goal in the final period, setting up another OT and the eventual shootout.
Boland tacked on two more goals, with Marco Palumbo stepping up by earning a goal and two assists. Springer had one goal and one assist and Gagnon also got an assist as Welch stopped 38 of Fulton’s 42 shots.
Cicero-North Syracuse does not have the same concerns as Liverpool. Having scrimmaged the Warriors on Nov. 27, the Northstars would enter the regular-season fray late last week with three games in as many days.
In the first of them, the Northstars hosted CBA/Jamesville-DeWitt last Thursday night at the Twin Rinks where, despite a late scoring surge, it lost 6-4 to the Brothers.
It wasn’t until C-NS trailed 5-2 that it really started to try and catch up late in the game. Fueling that comeback attempt, Matt Cramer earned a three-goal hat trick as Tyler Murray had a goal and two assists.
Nick Sciore added two assists, with single assists going to Holden Sarosy and Devin Kellogg. But CBA/J-D proved more balanced as six different players scored its six goals, with Tanner Burns and Kodi Dotterer each getting a goal and two assists.
Right after, C-NS went to the McQuaid Tournament at Rochester Ice Center, where on Friday it faced Canisius (Buffalo) in the opening round and lost, 4-1, to the Crusaders, and then fell 3-1 to Aquinas in the consonlation game.
