Six different players score as Princeton downs Notre Dame
Cooper Zullo has been around Princeton High hockey as a player and a fan before he wore the blue and white and he believes this team is among the best.
That’s quite a statement concerning the Tigers have long been one of the premier programs in the conference and the state.
It was Princeton’s depth and special teams that made the difference as it doubled up Notre Dame, 6-3, on a brisk Tuesday night at the Mercer County Skating Center in a Colonial Valley Conference divisional game.
The win lifts Princeton to 101-1 on the season and in the Colonial Division race they have 18 points, which puts them in the driver’s seat.
The loss leaves the Irish at 5-3-1 and to their credit they played hard despite having faced Robbinsville in an emotional game on Monday.
The Tigers found every way to score, getting three power play goals, a short-handed goal and two not from special teams.
Another amazing thing about Princeton is it had six different players score all six goals.
“That speaks for itself,” said Zullo, the Tigers captain, of having six players score. “I’ve seen a lot of Princeton hockey teams and I think this is the best one we’ve got.
They needed a little prodding from the coach, though.
“We started off pretty slow, but when our coach gave us a little talk we picked it up,” said TT Zhao, who had a goal and three assists. “We started moving the puck and getting it up the ice and scoring goals.”
The Princeton goals came from Zullo, Zhao, Julian
Drezner, John O’Donnell, Gabe Silverstein and John Zammit.
Zhao had three assists, Zullo two and Drezner, Silverstein, Zammit and Olsin O’Dell all with one.
“I happy we won, but I wasn’t happy with the way we played,” said Princeton coach Dave Hansen. “When we played Robbinsville/Allentown it was a team effort and it seemed like tonight it was a lot of individual work. We have to have five guys skating hard but good teams find a way to win.”
The Irish, who got goals from Ty Watson, Will Celli and Michael McVey, were coming off a big win over Robbinsville/Allentown and just couldn’t reach
the same level of focus and intensity.
Spending too much time in the penalty box didn’t help, either.
“Coming off a high from Monday we were definitely flat,” said ND coach Mike McVey. “We were always battling from behind and we looked tired in the defensive zone and that’s not an excuse. It was just too tough to play Robbinsville/Allentown and Princeton back-toback. Give them credit they did what they had to do.”
Notre Dame got an excellent game from Nathan Mayer in the goal with 40 saves. Most of the Princeton goals came off deflections.
“He made every save that I thought he could have made,” said McVey, of Mayer. “We had some guys look well, but we were spent.”
Princeton spent their time making special teams work and taking advantage of every chance.
“Notre Dame is a great team and we knew it was going to be a tough game,” said Zullo. “We just did everything we could do to get the win and it turned out in the end.”