An incident at the end of Stony Brook’s ice hockey game overshadowed a four-goal explosion in the second period on Saturday night when the Seawolves traveled to Rutgers.
Stony Brook came away with a 5-2 victory at ProTec Hockey Ponds in Somerset, N.J., but lost leading scorer and top line forward Angelo Serse for at least Saturday’s showdown with conference rival West Chester at the Rinx.
Serse was given a game misconduct and automatic one-game suspension for his hit on Rutgers Charles Stein in the waning seconds of the game.
“That was an incident when he was not thinking of his hockey team,” Stony Brook head coach Buzz Deschamps said. “He was thinking about himself personally.”
Stein came away from the hit with a concussion, according to Rutgers head coach Andy Gojdycz. He did not offer any further comment on the incident after multiple e-mail attempts.
Serse scored the Seawolves second goal of the game, which gave Stony Brook a 2-1 lead from which they would never look back.
After a slow first period that saw the Seawolves trail until the end, Serse’s goal sparked a four goal onslaught.
“When you get off the bus, maybe your legs aren’t moving the way you want them to,” assistant coach Chris Caroppoli said. “But in the second period we dominated.”
“The second period is probably the best period we played all year,” he said.
John Wong opened the scoring for the Seawolves with 1:27 left in the first period.
He took a pass from goaltender Derek Stevens at his own blue line. He turned and weaved through the entire Rutgers defense. He beat the last defender to the outside and roofed a back hand short side over the goalies shoulder to put the Seawolves on the board.
After Serse’s goal in the second, Rob Sacco scored the Seawolves third goal of the game off an assist from Kris Deckenback.
Less than three minutes later, Dan Cappizutto scored a power play goal when his slap shot from the point found its way through the traffic in front of the net and into the back of it.
Wong added his second goal of the game nearly three minutes later to put the Seawolves ahead 5-2.
The third period saw a parade of Seawolves to the penalty box, and Stony Brook was only to kill off all but one.
“We had a lead we weren’t going to give up,” Caroppoli said. “We took a couple of bad penalties, so it looked like a closer game than it was.”
But the final penalty was the one that hurt the Seawolves the most.
“We got a lot of players that could step up,” DesChamps said about the absence of Serse. “We’ll play just as well with him as without him next weekend. We have a lot of players looking for an opportunity to play. We have [Adam] Avila, and John Wong is playing good hockey now.”
DesChamps was happy with the way his team has rebounded from the rough start at the beginning of the season.
“We’re on a roll now, we’ve won six of our last seven games,” he said. “We’re right where we want to be right now going into next weekend.”
