WALTHAM, Mass. – Army head coach Brian Riley’s roster features nine New Englanders, including a handful of Massachusetts natives who felt right at home during a two-game Atlantic Hockey series with Bentley. The Black Knights split the set at Coach DeFelice Ice Rink, scoring twice in the third period for a 3-2 win in the opener before dropping a 4-2 decision.
“For two periods, I liked our game,” said Riley, himself a Brown graduate, of Saturday’s game. “Then, it came down to a 20-minute game, right? I thought Bentley was the team that played with more of a sense of urgency, and as a result, they ended on the good side and we ended on the bad side. … Like so many of the games this year it's going to come down to the third period, and it did again tonight.”
The Black Knights now stand 6-6-1 overall and 5-4-1 in Atlantic Hockey play. Before Saturday’s loss, Army had won back-to-back games after a three-game losing streak against Air Force and Sacred Heart.
Senior Trevor Fidler (Watertown, Mass.) and juniors Brendan Soucie (South Dennis, Mass.) and Dominic Franco (Portsmouth, R.I.) have been three of the Black Knights’ top forwards all season, while captain Dalton MacAfee (Needham, Mass.) is tied for the team lead with 13 points in 13 games, including 11 assists, from the blue line.
Fidler, Soucie, and Franco have formed a line for Army over the last two weekend series, combining for 10 points in the four-game span. Riley thinks highly of the local trio, and the sum of its parts, as a leading offensive group.
“You hope that when they're seniors they can have their best year. (Fidler is) off to a good start, so I'm excited about that,” said the 14th-year head coach. “(Soucie) has found the back of the net for us, and Dom Franco, to me, I think, is a top forward in this league.
“I really like that line. When they're on, they can be pretty dangerous.”
Soucie made a big impression during the first of his two “homecoming” games, scoring Army’s first and last goals in the Friday win. The former USPHL All-Star for the Islanders Hockey Club has scored three of his four goals on the season over the last four games after Friday’s shorthanded winner with 7:29 to play in regulation.
That victory was another recent example of the team’s resiliency. The Black Knights also scored with 11 seconds left and won in overtime to complete a sweep against Mercyhurst three weekends earlier. MacAfee and Franco assisted on junior Michael Wilson’s tying and winning goals, respectively, in a 3-2 win that extended Army’s five-game (4-0-1) unbeaten streak.
Army had a chance to do it again in Saturday’s series finale in Waltham as Franco deflected his fifth goal of the season past Bentley goaltender Aidan Pelino with 48 seconds remaining, but the Falcons went on to ice the game and salvage a split of the weekend with an empty-net tally.
“The (Friday) win was more important,” said Soucie, who had Belmont, Mass., native freshman Eric Butte on his line with Fidler earlier in the season. “I got the bounces, and it was nice to get those bounces, obviously. But pulling out a close win and doing it shorthanded, I think, showed our character, really battling until the last second because they had a couple chances (late in the game) we did not want to give them.”
Soucie sees the cohesion of his newly-formed line as, simply a byproduct of the West Point club’s tight-knit nature.
“We've changed up the lines a bit throughout the course of the year, but I think there's been a couple lines that automatically click because of that tight-knit (team) chemistry,” he said. “I think we just read off each other and we all play a little bit of a different style of game. We can manipulate the defensemen that way and capitalize. If one player is good in front of the net or in the corners, we can take advantage of that and build off each other.”
