The boys JV hockey team opened their season with a short road trip to neighboring Eaglebrook rink. While it’s still early in the season the Deerfield boys have been hard at work coming together as a team, figuring out their roles, and improving their skills and conditioning. We knew going in to the game this would be our season’s first big challenge. Eaglebrook had already played several games and this combined with the fact that this appears to be their best team in recent years, we knew the game would be a challenge. Alex Leong got the start in net this day and he was more than ready for the challenge of the skilled Eaglebrook skaters. Early on in the game Alex kept things close. A few miscues and early season mental errors were capitalized on by our hosts and halfway through the first period we found ourselves in a hole trailing 2-0. Ryan Welch would score his first goal of the season to close the gap to 2-1. Eaglebrook scored two more goals in the second period to take a 4-1 lead heading into the third period. The third period was a back and forth contest with the hosts netting one more goal to close the scoring our at 5-1. Defensemen Alex Strait, Matt Gardner, Darien Chiang, George Darling, Ben Gisonni, Bobby Miele and Alex Judelson all saw valuable minutes in the game and showed great poise under considerable pressure throughout the game.
The team now sets their sights on game #2 as we travel to Choate for Saturday’s contest against our arch-rival. This should be a great contest!