The Niagara University Purple Eagles split their home and home series with arch-rival, Canisius over the weekend. Friday night’s 7-3 victory came as a result of a second period in which the purps capitalized on 4 of their 6 power-play opportunities. Sunday night’s loss was one in which the coaching staff would like to have back. Despite a valiant second-period push, they were unable to close out the third. Associate head coach, Tom Mooradian had this to say about his team’s weekend performance:

“Well of course we’re unhappy. When you take a rational approach to the 6 periods we played this weekend, we won 2 and a half. Against a team like Canisius, that’s just simply unacceptable. We challenged our entire team to step up as secondary scoring was something we’ve been lacking throughout the first 3 games … and we failed. When 4 of the 6 periods you play against a league opponent look the way they did this weekend, change is inevitable. It’s time for us to start holding everyone accountable in order to spark our entire lineup.”

Despite not closing out game 2, coach did touch on some of the positives that came out of a series that saw the line of David Fish, David Christopher and Robbie McNamara put all 4 goals on the scoreboard during yesterday’s contest.

“I think Fishy had a natural hat-trick, which was nice to see. I’m an advocate of recognizing the positives and the 9-14-13 line was one of the few we could take away from yesterday. They’re clearly firing from all cylinders as 7 of the 11 goals we put up this weekend came from a member of that unit. I’d also like to praise Bennett Oxborough as he bailed us out of some more in-tight opportunities on Friday and made some big saves yesterday, despite outshooting them. We’re happy with the work-ethic we see from guys like Anthony Thurston, Luc Cross, Damon Theara, Chad Moore and Eric Hulford. We’re hoping to re-position some players throughout the top 9 and on the back-end to see if we can help them break the scoring barrier.

Friday night’s victory was certainly a fun one as we got to showcase a lot of our talent. Unfortunately, the response heading into the second tilt wasn’t the one that we were looking for. We can’t dwell on the negatives as we did walk away with 1 victory against a very good NECHL opponent this weekend. One that we lost to twice, last season. We’re going to have to come to work this week as we’re heading into the depths of our schedule. We have to be sharp as the road doesn’t get much easier from here.”

He did also mention that fundamental mistakes and an overall lack of communication is what led to Sunday night’s loss. Niagara looks to regroup heading into a weekend in which they’ll be travelling down to Pittsburgh to take on a top 20 team in Robert Morris University. Sunday night at 7 pm, they’ll host NECHL rival, RIT in league play. Tune in to the team’s first YouTube broadcast that is set to air, at home, on Saturday.