By
Chris Suffecool
Arizona Daily Wildcat
Saturday's game turned ugly
The Arizona Icecats won two more games this weekend to remain unbeaten at home. The Icecats (5-1 overall) easily beat No. 17 West Chester University (5-4-2) 10-3 Friday night and won an ugly contest, 7-1, Saturday night at the Tucson Convention Center.
Icecats head coach Leo Golembiewski was impressed with his team's consistent effort throughout Friday night's game.
"(Friday's) performance was as good a 60 minutes as we've played probably in a year and a half" said Golembiewski. "This is a pretty strong Icecats team...probably one of the strongest teams, if not the strongest team, we've had in 10 years."
The entire Icecats team got in on the scoring act Friday as nine Icecats scored goals.
Senior forward Marc Harris had the first and last goal of the night while eight other Icecats scored in between.
The Icecats outshot the Golden Rams 49-25, and dominated the entire game.
"It was just a good, solid mental, psychological and physical performance" Golembiewski said.
After Friday night's game, West Chester changed its strategy for Saturday night's contest to a more physical style of play.
The result was a hard hitting game with penalties, fights and ejections.
At one point during the first period, the Icecats' entire first line of Harris, senior forward Paul Dorn, junior forward Mike Graves, junior defenseman Tom Wood, and senior defenseman Ty Brush were in the penalty box along with junior forward Kyle Neary.
"We had to share seats" Harris said. "It was unreal, it was kind of comical."
With all the penalties the Golden Rams were able to capitalize and take a quick lead on a power play goal at 4:15 in the first period.
Five minutes later the Icecats got the equalizer by senior forward Kyle McNeilance on an assist by freshman forward Joe Boysen.
The teams skated to a 1-1 tie at the end of one period.
The second period was a different story for the Icecats. It was just as physical, but the Icecats dominated, scoring four goals to put the game out of reach.
Graves scored what would be the game winner only 24 seconds into the second period on assists from Dorn and Harris.
According to freshman forward Braden Koprivica, Golembiewski gave his team some good advice between the first and second periods.
"(He told us) basically that there is no way they can hang with us, we're a much better team and he said 'If you guys don't prove it, you'll probably disappoint me' " Koprivica said.
The game got ugly in third period as a fight broke out that suspended play for 15-minutes while the referees sorted things out.
By the end of the game, 14, 10-minute misconduct penalties had been handed out and several players had been ejected.
According to Harris, the Golden Rams played dirty but weren't up to the Icecats talent level.
"We are by far more superior than them, hockey-wise" he said. "So they came out and just tried to beat us up. Obviously we held our own in the fight."
"We held our own all game, we wound up winning 7-1. So their strategy did not work out like they planned."
