Mens Hockey First Games

NSA Starts Season with Hat Trick Wins 

by Maggie Cross

LAKE PLACID- NSA’s Junior A men’s hockey team racked up the points this weekend by outscoring the Boston Junior Blackhawks 22-5 to complete a three game sweep. The Mountaineers dazzled friends and family alike with silky moves, top cheese snipes, amazing team chemistry and a few thrown fists.

 NSA dominated the first game of the three game set from start to finish, winning by a score of 9-0. 



National Sports Academy’s new logo



Kevin Valenti and Wes Moon each put in two goals and Patrick Hayes, Taylor Widenmaier, Eric Halin, Devin Desnoyers and Zach Dymock each lit the lamp once. Also, Ian Kliewe was the play maker of the game with three assists.

Jakob Rasmussen was a brick wall in the net saving 22 of 22 shots.

Second matchup, same teams, same place, similar outcome. Despite an early goal by the Blackhawks, NSA was able to answer with 5 goals for a final score of 5-1.

 Dymock sniped another 2 goals while Halin, Hayes and Desnoyers each found the back of the net once. Rasmussen was once again the backbone of the team saving 23 of 24 shots.

Chirps were being thrown left and right and tempers ran high. Joe Klienhenz and Tyler Randig both received game misconducts for fighting.

By Sunday both teams had already played 120 minutes in 2 days. After taking the first two games easily, the Mountaineers hoped their conditioning would help lead them to a sweep.

The Blackhawks came out hot, scoring 2 early goals. However NSA bore down in the offensive zone, scoring four unanswered goals.

Boston was the only team to score in the second period, narrowing the margin to one.

Chicago Junior Blackhawks logo

However, NSA came out hot in the third scoring another four goals only to be answered by 1 goal for a final score of 8-4. Dymock once again had 2 goals and Widenmaier, Mattia Laudi, Desnoyers, Valenti, Halin and Brandon Patraw each racked up one. Torkel Bjarneman played a solid game in net saving 16 of 20 shots.

Head coach Rod Simmons was very pleased with his teams play. The NSA mens team was selected just 1 week ago and within that one week they were able to successfully learn all the necessary systems to come out on top.

Some strengths of the team was “the team chemistry, the ability to work well together as a team” said Coach Simmons and “the fact that they did a good job always moving their feet.”

When asked what the team was doing to improve team chemistry coach said that they were doing many small games on the ice and team bonding activities off ice such as learning facts about each other and off ice responsibilities.

All weekend NSA had 31 power plays and 33 penalty kills. Out of the 31 power plays they had 7 goals and out of the 33 penalty kills they only let in 1 goal. NSA also had 2 shorthanded goals.