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Icecats come away from road trip on good note

Heart-wrenching losses can be tough for anyone. Add the pressure of traveling on a long road trip and there's also the potential to make the road trip even longer.

But the experienced UA Icecats were able to show their toughness and come off their Pennsylvania road trip on a positive note, defeating West Chester and Scranton in dominating fashion following a difficult loss to Penn State on Wednesday.

Led by two goals and an assist by junior center Marc Harris, the Icecats defeated West Chester 5-0 Friday night, as sophomore goalie Jason Morgan garnered his second career shutout as an Icecat.

"West Chester showed a lot of tenacity out there, and we were started off a little slow coming off the tough loss," UA head coach Leo Golembiewski said. "But I felt overall during the weekend we played well."

Saturday night's game against Scranton, an NCAA Division III team, was much more explosive. The quicker Icecats were able to dominate Scranton by playing tight defense and not allowing any scoring opportunities for Scranton to take advantage of.

UA senior goaltender Mark Meister had 18 saves, putting his record at 3-0-1 for the season.

Harris and junior left wing Ed Carfora led all scorers Saturday night with five points each.

Paul Dorn also added a hat trick and an assist, with Pavel Jandura hitting his third goal in three nights for the Icecats.

By taking both games against West Chester and Scranton, the Icecats pushed their record to 6-1 and moved to No. 6 in the American Collegiate Hockey Association poll.

Unfortunately, it wasn't all good news this weekend.

Junior right winger Mike Graves, one of Arizona's top players, plans to have surgery this week and could be out up to three months, which is much worse than was earlier thought.

Also, former Icecat Paul Juran, who played for the team in the 1996-97 season, was killed in a car accident Saturday night. Juran, who was a high school coach for Highland Park High School in Illinois, was one of the scoring leaders for the Icecats that season. The team plans to honor him in some fashion for the rest of the season.

Arizona returns home this weekend to face Rutgers on Friday and Saturday night at the Tucson Convention Center.