December 12, 2022 by Hailey Kopraski (’23) by Leah Harden (’23)
On Friday night, December 2nd the Saratoga Springs Varsity hockey team started the season off strong with the first official game where the boys triumphed with a home victory of 5-2 against Ithaca.
Victor Cutting, a senior and captain, said, “the energy on the bench and in the locker room right from the start was pretty good.” The game got off to a quick start with senior Luke Henderson scoring a goal at about 3 minutes in. Ithaca scored shortly after, but Toga managed to keep pushing the pace set by Henderson’s strong goal..
After about 5 minutes in the second period, Charlie Oke scored (assisted by Jake Badar) and then, 5 minutes later, scored again (assisted by Matt Rissetto). There were 28 shots by Toga and 15 by Ithaca at the end of that period.
As the game progressed, the referees made some controversial calls. Reffing in sports is always tough and a very controversial subject, especially in hockey which is a more aggressive sport. Cutting said, “I’m not normally one to talk about the refs but needless to say they weren’t good. Even though we had some bad calls thrown our way, I thought we did a nice job not letting that affect us, although it was frustrating at times.”
On the contrary, junior on the team, Badar, said, “I feel like the reffing was fine, it is always tough on them to make the right calls through the game, everyone always thinks they can be better.” No matter what, 9 times out of 10 if the call is against you or the player you are rooting for, you assume it is a bad call and that the ref is wrong, so the idea of good reffing can easily be skewed.
The game was able to wrap up with 2 goals scored at the end of the third period–one by Patrick Temple and one by Maddox Pemrick. The total shots on goal for Toga were 39 and 23 for Ithaca, and the final score was 5-2 Toga.
Although the game still resulted in a Toga victory, some players feel that they could have done better and that the score wasn’t as high due to the amount of penalties given during the game. Cutting says, “I think the score reflected the way the game was played. I think we are a lot better than them but when you play a good part of the game shorthanded, you are naturally not going to score as much. Sometimes good teams have to find a way to win ugly and I would say we did just that.” Badar agrees, “The score was good to see, we expect to win every game we come into, but we can’t play like we have already won during the game.”
Even though a win is a win, there is always room for improvement–especially at the start of the season. Senior Gavin Verral said, the team should focus on “definitely getting settled in our zone and handling the puck well,” and Charlie Oke, senior and assistant captain, said they need “less penalties, more hits, and better passing/breakouts.”
Overall, despite the penalties, the team pulled it together and was able to kick off the year right and played well as a team maintaining great supportive energy throughout the whole game. Cutting says “I think this team has a lot of potential to do something very special this year and I’m extremely excited to be apart of that.” Off to such a great start, maybe this is just the right season for Toga to take home their third state championship.