Photo Credit: Mady Salvani- Army West Point Athletics

For Army West Point, they came out against the Bentley Falcons strong. They were generating high-danger chances and quality looks through the first period. Gavin Abric played well, save conceding a goal on an athletic , and fast play from Kohei Sato, and a seeing eye shot later in the frame. The Black Knights just could not buy a goal for most of the game. Coach Brian Riley was honest in saying regarding, the first period “ we didn’t play too bad but we were down 2-0.”

The best moment of the evening for the Black Knights came in the second. Ricky Lyle made a superb individual play as he took the puck off a Falcon’s stick from behind the net and wrapped it into the net late in the second. That gave the Black Knights a goal and some hope heading into the third frame.

The third period started well, but did not produce results as the score of 3-1 in favor of the Falcons remained final. The biggest factor against the Black Knights came midway through the third period. Coby Mack got a checking from behind major with a little over eight minutes left in the game and it sapped momentum from the Black Knights. On the Coby Mack checking from behind major, Riley challenged a check from behind just before that and it was not given as a penalty.

On the night Riley was blunt, “ it’s hard to beat anybody when you only score one goal.” He praised Gavin Abric for keeping his team in the game all night in net.

For the series finale, Riley noted that his team has to get better at breaking the puck out. Bentley takes unclean breakouts and goes the other way quite frequently.

Riley praised the individual play of Ricky Lyle on his goal. “ that goal had a positive effect on us.” It gave the team more drive and energy going into the third period. Hopefully Lyle’s energy and the team’s effort, which was there last night, can produce better results. The effort was there, the results were not. For that to change, this team has to produce more chances, and focus on changing angles of attack for whomever Bentley puts in net today. If they can do that, they have a chance to come home on Thursday night against Sacred Heart and earn a final conference win before Christmas break.

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