Sacred Heart defeats Air Force, 3-1

U.S. AIR FORCE ACADEMY, Colo. – Justin Robbins made 24 saves as Sacred Heart defeated Air Force, 3-1, in the final game of a four-game series, Tuesday, Nov. 23, at the Academy's Cadet Ice Arena. SHU won three of the four games in the series.
Sacred Heart (6-5-3, 4-2-2 AHA) opened the scoring at 7:46 of the first period on the rush as Neil Shea scored his third of the season.

The Pioneers scored two goals in a span of 52 seconds in the second period for a 3-0 lead. The Pioneers' second goal came when Logan Britt dropped a pass for Andrius Kulbis-Marino and his wrister found the back of the net at 7:14 in a 4-on-4 situation. Still in 4-on-4, Kevin Lombardi forced a turnover and skated down the right side. His wrister from the top of the right circle put the visitors up 3-0 at 8:06. Following the goal, Austin Park replaced Air Force goalie Alex Schilling.

Late in the third, Air Force pulled the goalie for the extra attacker and Luke Rowe put the Falcons on the board. Brandon Koch gave the puck to Mitchell Digby on the half wall. Digby fed Rowe at the center point and his blast cut the Pioneer lead to 3-1 at 18:12.

"This was a hard stretch on our young team," head coach Frank Serratore said. "We fought right to the buzzer. Our will to win was right there from start to finish. As long as we keep our competitive spirit, there will be a happy ending to this story. Sacred Heart is a good, deep team. I have a lot of admiration for both teams to play at the level they did for four games in five days. We went down tonight, but we went down swinging."

Each team had 25 shots on goal. Air Force was 0-for-3 on the power play while killing all six of SHU's man-advantages. The Falcons killed all 21 of Sacred Heart's power plays in the series. Schilling made nine saves for the Falcons while Park stopped all 13 shots he faced.

Air Force is now idle until a two-game conference series against Canisius, Dec. 3-4, at Cadet Ice Arena.

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Players Mentioned

Mitchell Digby

Brandon Koch

Austin Park

Luke Rowe