The NOVA hockey team won its first match of the year 7-6, on Friday, Oct. 16 at the Virginia Stating Center in Charlottesville with a 9:45 pm start. As an exultant Coach Haga stated afterwards, “We got a monkey off our back,”in two ways, in winning its first game of the year after two losses and in coming back from a very early 3-0 deficit.

James Madison University scored early in the first period at 19:52, 19.08 and 18.57 racking up a 3-0 lead. A bit shell-shocked, NOVA took no timeout to compose itself to finally start playing some defense and offense.

At 4:20, NOVA defensemen Ben Perkins scored the first goal on a power play just after JMU had gone from two players down to one. At 1:52, NOVA’s Mike Pighini started his big night with a goal, making it 2-3 at the end of the period. The situation at the end of the period was certainly different than at the beginning, as NOVA had revived after the initial JMU onslaught.

The second period saw JMU finally score again at 10:57 with NOVA down two players. NOVA was unperturbed and began its own scoring barrage. At 6:40, Pighini once again scored, and then at 5:16 and again at 4:32 Scott Johnson scored. With those goals, NOVA carried a 5-4 lead into the intermission.

Wing Chris Altice was down on the ice for several minutes near the end of the second period after colliding hard with a JMU player while bringing up the puck out in front of the JMU goal. He appeared to be fine later as he played in the third period.

NOVA defenseman Lucas Grunwald scored at 18:45 on a power play in the third period, and NOVA had some slack in their lead, 6-4. JMU wasn’t finished, though, as it closed the deficit to 6-5 at about the 14:20 mark. Pighini restored NOVA’s lead at 10:40 to 7-5, but JMU scored again at about 6:47 to cut the lead to one.

The rest of the game was frantic, and NOVA called a timeout at 3:06 to catch its breath and plot out the final time remaining. The remaining time saw a few scrums in front of the NOVA net, such as at 1:06, but no damage was done as NOVA went on to take the close 7-6 win.

Coach Haga was certainly pleased with the win, his team coming back from that early deficit. His team “showed a lot of heart” and played well, employing “good passing.”

Looking at the statistics for the game, JMU had a commanding lead in shots taken, 43-25, as goalie Justin Reich had a strong game after the first minute. NOVA made their shots count; the JMU goalie only made 18 saves.

Wing Mike Pighini scored three goals for NOVA, while Scott Johnson had four points with two goals and two assists. NOVA’s seven goals were accompanied by 14 assists.

NOVA will play JMU again on November 6 at 7 pm at the Prince William Ice Center which should be an interesting game.

Scoring for NOVA:

Mike Pighini 3 goals    Scott Johnson 2 goals, 2 assists    Tyler Gritis  3 assists

Chris Altice 2 assists    Ben Perkins 1 goal, 1 assist           Eli Khalife  2 assists

Tyler Witt 2 assists    Lucas Grunwald 1 goal   Bullen 1 assist    Edward Marin 1 assist

By: Arch Scurlock

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