Ice hockey remains unbeaten against Seahawks

The ECU ice hockey team kicked off the new semester by improving its all-time record against UNCW to 8-0 this past weekend. The Pirates held off a late surge from the Seahawks at home Friday night to prevail 6-5, before winning 9-5 on Saturday in Wilmington.

Despite the winning efforts, coach Mike Markham wasn't totally pleased with the outcomes.

"It really wasn't a good weekend," said Markham. "Even though we won the games, [the team] didn't really do what we wanted them to do."

Markham's displeasure began with a third period collapse on Friday. ECU (13-5, 7-1) built a 6-0 lead after two periods of play, but UNCW came roaring back thanks to a rash of Pirate penalties.

The Seahawks had the lead cut in half to 6-3 by the 7:39 mark. The first two goals of the period were scored with just three ECU defenders on the ice.

UNCW clawed its way back to within one goal in the final minute of play after trading its goaltender for an extra attacker.

It was too little, too late for the Seahawks however, as the Pirates held on for a winning score line that was too close for comfort.

"We kind of let our hot heads get the better of us," said team president and center Zach Johnston. "We just started to lose our discipline there at the end and it ended up biting us in the rear."

Johnston opened the scoring at the midway point of the first period when he slapped in a rebound in front of the net to make it 1-0. Sophomore Sam Duehring closed out the first period scoring by taking advantage of a bad dump-off pass between a Seahawk defender and the goalie. Duehring sniped in the shorthanded goal to give ECU a 2-0 advantage.

Sean Burns and Ian Falcon scored goals less than two minutes apart to double the Pirate advantage early in the second period. Burns added a show-stopping break away goal with 9:34 to play before freshman Dave Orlando added a shorthanded goal to give ECU the 6-0 lead after two.

Johnston was concerned that the inability to close the game out would motivate UNCW to come out even stronger on Saturday.

"They're definitely rolling with the momentum," Johnston said following Friday's match.

But this time, ECU earned the winning result without quite as much drama. The Seahawks trimmed a Pirate lead to 8-5 in the third period but could get no closer, as an Ian Falcon score put the game out of reach.

After a slow start to the first period, ECU scored five goals, including two shorthanded goals from Duehring and freshman Kyle Charron to give the Pirates a 5-2 lead at the end of one.

Burns and Orlando netted two more goals in the second to up the lead to 7-4.

The Pirates were especially mindful of preserving their unbeaten record against the Seahawks.

"It was a big motivator with us," said Johnston. "There's a really big rivalry between us and we would definitely like to keep that going and keep winning in that rivalry."

More important, the pair of wins improves ECU's conference record to 7-1 on the season and keeps the Pirates atop their division.

This weekend, ECU will square off against two more division rivals in Loyola and George Washington. Earlier this season, ECU defeated Loyola 6-5, but came up short against George Washington in overtime by a score of 4-3.

The Pirates take on Loyola in Greenville tomorrow at 9:30 before facing George Washington at 3:30 on Saturday.

This writer can be contacted at sports@theeastcarolinian.com.