Courtesy of Babson College
HYANNIS, Mass. – The Amherst College men's hockey team suffered a 3-1 loss to Hobart College in the championship game of the Cape Cod Lighthouse Invitational Tournament Sunday afternoon at the Hyannis Youth and Community Center.
Hobart improves to 4-4 overall, while Amherst drops to 3-1 with its first setback of the year. The Lord Jeffs will begin a five-game home stand when they host Wesleyan University on Saturday, Dec. 3 at 7 p.m.
Hobart College junior goaltender Martin Ausserhofer stopped 24 Amherst shots en route to Most Valuable Player honors. Nathan Corey '13 (Anchorage, Alaska) also played well in defeat for the Lord Jeffs, finishing with 28 saves in net.
Representing the Jeffs on the All-Tournament Team were sophomore forward Andrew Kurlandski (Kirkwood, Mo.), who netted a pair of goals in the Lord Jeffs' semifinal win over Salem State, and junior forward Johnny Van Siclen (Carlisle, Mass.), who tallied an assist in the semis and a goal in the championship game.
Hobart jumped out to an immediate 1-0 lead on Sunday, as senior co-captain Greg Ciciola scored his third goal of the season off a Terrence O'Neill feed just 24 seconds in.
That lead would hold up until early in the second period, when Van Siclen took consecutive feeds from senior Jeremy Deutsch (Lloyd Harbor, N.Y.) and junior Nick Brunette (Chaska, Minn.) and scored his fourth of the year on a power play to tie the contest at 5:31.
The Statesmen regained the lead for good late in the second, as junior David Stevens netted his first of the winter off an assist from sophomore Keith Clarke at 16:23. Hobart then added a huge insurance goal midway through the third, as Ciciola and junior Mike White assisted junior Bobby Hannah on his first goal of the season for a 3-1 Hobart lead at 9:03.
That would be more than enough for Asserhofer, who followed up a five-save first period with nine stops in the second and 10 more in the third. Coupled with his 16 stops in a little more than 48 minutes of action in Hobart's semifinal victory over Babson, the junior netminder turned away 40 of the 42 shots on goal that he faced in the tournament.
