The No. 1/1 Oswego State men’s ice hockey team moved to 9-0-0/7-0-0 on the season with an 8-1 shellacking over the Morrisville State Mustangs. A four-line effort and goals from eight different goal scorers paved the way for the Lakers to complete the weekend sweep of the Mustangs.

The eight goals scored tonight is a season high for the Lakers, who now prepare for a two-game road swing to face SUNY Fredonia and Buffalo State next weekend. Coming off an almost untimely holiday break, Oswego State was able to avoid getting beat by an inferior team twice this weekend. The Lakers registered 45 shots to the Mustangs’ 19 and kept adding to their lead, even deep into regulation.

“I give Morrisville credit,” head coach Ed Gosek said postgame. “It’s hard to continue to compete when you’re down like that. I thought they maintained their composure, and they competed extremely hard right up to the very end so it’s a credit to them.”

A new-look bottom six in tonight’s game impressed throughout, and the third line of Joey Davies, Josh Zizek and Mitch Emerson tallied a combined three points. Davies scored once and was credited with an assist on Zizek’s first-career goal as a Laker to headline the success of the bottom six forwards.

“From the consistency standpoint and having the ability to roll four lines, we were very pleased with the energy,” Gosek said. “I thought last night we were just a little, I don’t want to say stale, but uninspired. We were just flat, maybe some of it has to do with the off week, but we have enough guys that are capable of playing. We’re going to put guys in that are going to bring us some jump and some energy and some enthusiasm.”

Aside from Davies and Zizek scoring goals, Matt Galati, Andrew Barton, Kenny Neil, Shawn Hulshof, Mitchell Herliehy and Stephen Johnson tallied goals tonight. The Laker power play, which was ranked third in the SUNYAC coming in, was 0-3, but put up nine shots while on the man advantage.

With an early tie in this contest, Oswego State could have been seeing a much different outcome if it was not playing one of the top teams in the SUNYAC.

“We forced a lot of pucks tonight,” Gosek said. “We had a lot of turnovers, they didn’t capitalize on them so you can get away with it… I thought we were waiting in the neutral zone to receive pucks, instead of coming back hard and coming underneath pucks. So, a lot of those little things we got away with tonight. Would maybe a stronger team at this point in the season capitalized on that? Who knows.”

Fortunately for the Lakers, they were able to capitalize on enough scoring chances to down Morrisville State. Another explosion in the second period was what gave Oswego State control of the game. The Lakers now have 19 goals in the middle frame on the season.

“It was just pretty nice to play at home tonight,” Cameron Berry said. “We haven’t been here in so long that all the boys just said ‘we gotta bear down,’ and we know that as long as we just keep our feet moving and getting pucks in deep, it’s just going to come. When it did we all just started to roll, and we all just started to feed off each other.”

The Lakers saw each Morrisville State goaltender in tonight’s contest. CJ Sharp started the game, but was taken out after he was hit in the mask with a shot and allowed Neil to score his seventh of the season to put the Lakers up 4-1. No word if Sharp was hurt on the play, but he did stay on the bench for the remainder of regulation. Sal Stalteri appeared in his first collegiate game tonight. He was pulled after allowing one goal on two shots. Freshman Jared Young would then relieve Stalteri, making 16 saves while allowing two goals.

Oswego State’s freshman netminder, Cedric Hansen, also saw his first regular season action this year. He played the final period after the Lakers were already leading 6-1. David Jacobson started and earned his fifth win of the season by making 12 saves on 13 shots in 40 minutes.

“It felt really nice,” Hansen said. “The boys were really supportive throughout. It was good to kind of get the first few saves out of the way and then kind of settled in after that, felt really nice.”

Oswego State will prepare for the second and third place teams in the SUNYAC next weekend. Buffalo State is 4-1-1 in the conference with nine points and sits five points back of the Lakers. SUNY Fredonia is tied in points with Buffalo State but has played two more games.

Oswego State will square off with the Blue Devils on Friday at 7 p.m. at the Steele Hall Ice Arena in Fredonia, NY.