The Matadors lost their opening home game 8-5 to division rival UC San Diego at Valley Ice Center Saturday.
The loss drops the Matadors ice hockey team to a record of 2-1 in division play. The loss at home follows the same pattern as last season, when CSUN and UCSD both won games on the opposing team’s home ice.
“It was against a team that we felt we had a much larger arsenal than,” said CSUN head coach Sean McLynn. “But we’ve got a good group of guys that are looking forward to the rest of the season. We have to have a short memory and learn from our mistakes.”
CSUN started the game slow, letting UCSD build an early lead of 5-1 in the beginning of the second period. McLynn then tried to give the team some momentum by switching goalies. Goalie Robert Beltrami started the game and has looked solid so far this season, but after UCSD built their lead, McLynn thought it was time to put in veteran goaltender Geronimo Cebrero.
“We switched it up a bit,” McLynn said. “It’s a tough decision to make sometimes. But, we felt that our goaltender gave up a couple quick goals and we tried to stop the momentum from going to San Diego.”
The switch in net seemed to give CSUN exactly what they needed. After a couple of quick saves by Cebrero, the Matadors’ offense woke up and scored three goals in less than 10 minutes. That brought UCSD’s lead to just one goal and the second period ended with the score at 5-4.
“We picked up the physical play and the intensity,” McLynn said. “We fought our way right back in it. It was a great effort. We just ran out of time.”
CSUN fell just short of making a comeback against a division rival. UCSD held the Matadors scoreless in the third period until CSUN forward Ryan Jackson scored a goal with 52.5 seconds left in the game, making the score 7-5.
In a last attempt to stay in the game, CSUN pulled the goalie to put Chris Gale on the ice as an extra attacker. That gave CSUN five forwards and one defenseman for the final seconds of the game. With the game already out of reach, UCSD added insult to injury by scoring an empty-net goal with just two seconds left for a final score of 8-5.
“It was a very disappointing loss for us.” McLynn said. “We were up against a team that we’ve always had competitive games with, but we’ve managed to handle them the past few seasons. Just like us, they’ve improved a lot. They just came out, got some early goals and just outworked us.”
Despite the loss, McLynn said has a positive outlook for the rest of the season. He also said that some good had come out of the loss.
“I really believe that this is the first game in our young season that we showed a lot of emotion,” McLynn said. “We got down by a pretty good deficit early and the guys fought back really hard. They showed a lot of character.”
CSUN has a road trip this weekend to play Northern Arizona on Friday and on Saturday. Both games start at 8:30 p.m.
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