NIAGARA UNIV., N.Y. – Senior Giancarlo Iuorio stunned the UConn Huskies with three goals to push the Niagara men’s hockey team to a 3-0 victory on Friday evening in front of a boisterous crowd at Dwyer Arena.
Iuorio tallied a goal in the opening minute of play and added another two quick goals in the second stanza to give the Purple Eagles (3-2-2; 2-0-0 AHA) its second win in two games over AHA foes. This was the senior’s first hat-trick of his career.
Senior Marc Zanette also had a three-point night for NU, contributing three helpers on the night while junior Ryan Murphy added two assists. Junior goaltender Carsen Chubak pushed aside 34 UConn (0-3-1; 0-2-0 AHA) shots for his second shutout of the season.
“I thought from start to finish our energy and execution was really good,” head coach David Burkholder said. “Five-on-five we carried that play. Our focus all week was to try to take their goalie’s eyes away and get some rebounds. I thought we did a good job getting a lot of puck on him, but it wasn’t enough because penalties kept on taking us out of our rhythm. If we can cut those down we can be a dangerous team.”
The Purple Eagles wasted no time in getting on the board as Iuorio grabbed his team-leading fourth goal of the season 55 seconds into the opening period. Ryan Murphy let a shot go from inside the left circle that was pushed aside by Husky goaltender Garrett Bartus, but the rebound bounced to the stick of Iuorio who had an open net to snap home the easy goal.
Heading into the first intermission the teams were deadlock in shots, as NU and UConn had 11 looks on net.
Once again the Purps found the back of the net early in the period, as Iuorio tallied his second of the night at the 18:50 mark. Murphy cleared the defensive zone with a feed to Zanette down the right boards who flew in on Bartus on a two-on-one with Iuorio. Zanette slid the puck to his teammate who lifted the puck over the pads of the Husky goalie.
“The line of Murphy, Zanette and Iuorio played fantastic,” added Burkholder. “Giancarlo is a senior captain and Zanette is a passionate guy that leads by example. We kept those three together after the Clarkson weekend and it was a lot fun watching them in practice this week. They were on fire all week so the whole team sensed they would have a breakout night.”
Iuorio completed his three-goal stand just over two minutes later capitalizing on a mistake by the UConn defense during their man-advantage. The Husky defense was unable to take control of a Purple Eagle dump in and Iuorio jumped on the loose puck in the blue paint for his six goal of the year.
The game ended with UConn outshooting the Purple Eagles by a 34-30 margin.
