Golden Eagles spear Knights  to qualify for the playoffs
By Jared Smith
Staff Writer

Sometimes, it just clicks. Whether it’s proving the naysayers wrong or trying to break a historical losing mentality, for some teams, enough is enough and the will to win overpowers all.

The Brockport Golden Eagles finally broke a seven-year playoff drought, defeating SUNY Geneseo 2-1 in their final State University of New York Athletic Conference regular season game on Friday, Feb. 16, in the Tuttle North Ice Arena.

The win propelled Brockport (7-11-7, 3-6-5 SUNYAC) into the playoffs and a first-round game versus SUNY Plattsburgh, Tuesday night, Feb. 20.

Four minutes into the third period against Geneseo, freshman Sean O’Malley, who teammates call “Mitts” for his outstanding hands, intercepted an Ice Knights’ pass, chipped the puck off the board to himself and then took off down the ice to leave junior goaltender Derek Jokic lying on the ice watching a beautiful back-handed shot travel into the net.

By Mike Pratt, FREELANCE PHOTOGRAPHER Steve Seedhouse (No. 10) scores the first goal for the Golden Eagles in the 2-1 victory against Geneseo that qualified Brockport for the SUNYAC playoffs for the first time since the 1999-2000 seeason.

O’Malley’s sixth goal of the season gave Brockport a 2-0 third-period advantage. From there, the Golden Eagles didn’t play to lose by hanging back, instead, they attacked Geneseo’s defense and played to win.

Brockport forced the puck into Geneseo’s zone again and again, to eat up the clock. Even after allowing an odd-man goal by Mike McDonald with five minutes left, Brockport continued to attack until the final horn sounded.

“We thought if we could just keep the puck down in their zone, cycle the corners, wear them out and get a chance or two, we would put the pressure on them,” said Brockport head coach Brian Dickinson.

A week ago, Brockport seemed anything but a playoff team in a 7-4 loss to SUNY Fredonia. Friday, Brockport showed a winner’s confidence, out-shooting Geneseo 14-7 in the third period.

“There has been lot of talk about us possibly backing into the playoffs,” Dickinson said. “We put ourselves in a position to be in that spot, we were proud of that.”
“I feel that maybe we got over the hump,” senior Greg Schwind said. “I think we just decided to keep playing the way we wanted to play, even if we were leading.”

Schwind, forward A.J. Maio and defenseman Anthony Leccese all celebrated their senior night on a high note helping Brockport defeat Geneseo (16-9-0, 10-4-0) for the first time in four years.

“This is probably the biggest win in my career,” Maio said. “We haven’t had too many wins like that here. It was tooth and nail. It’s a big win against the No. 2 team in this league.”

Leccese, who assisted on a Steve Seedhouse power-play goal two minutes into the second period, said, “We started to believe in ourselves.We played to win. We just got to bring it Tuesday night versus Plattsburgh.”

Brockport goaltender Greg Van’t Hof collected his third victory of the season by stopping 25 shots and making many big saves.