Rutkowski Train

If you have not already, it is time to jump on the Joey Rutkowski hype train. The sophomore is playing in his first season at Oswego State, but he drew into the lineup on day one and has not stopped impressing since. He tallied his first assist of his collegiate career against Morrisville State on Dec. 3 and is also is a +7 on the year. The only other first-year player ahead of him in that category on this roster is defenseman Chris MacMillan (+12).

Rutkowski (8) is aggressive and not afraid to step up in the play. He is also extremely smart while doing so. His offensive mindset gets him in good spaces for the forwards to find him up top, and he is able to keep shots low and hard for deflections.

Here is an example from the first period. He even had the wherewithal to demand the puck from the senior Andrew Barton. Watch him call for the puck, walk the line and shoot when he has a decent lane at the net. Just three crossovers and he is in position.

Here is Rutkowski keeping his feet moving and trying to get into a scoring zone. This is the aggressiveness and smarts coming to play in the offense zone, as previously mentioned.

Rutkowski curls around the circle and into the slot, then gets right back into position when he knows he is covered. This all happened on the same shift too.

And he can also level people with bone-crushing hits for good measure. 
Best Little Thing

Successful zone entries are emphasized more so in today’s style of hockey.  Every forward should be able to get pucks in deep and forecheck, but every bottom six forward should pride themselves on just getting pucks in and going in to create havoc in the offensive zone.

Here Josh Zizek gives one heck of an extra effort to chip the puck to Cameron Berry. Morrisville State’s Mason Corliss is now unable to get the puck back to his defense so they can regroup. Berry then successfully swats the puck out of the air and into the Mustangs’ zone. Best Pizza

Killing the Berry penalty midway through the third, Alex Botten served up a pizza of a turnover in the neutral zone to Mike Giacometti. All Botten needs to do is just dump this puck in to kill more clock. Luckily for him, Herlihey took advantage of Giacometti fumbling with the puck in his skates, but assistant coach Mark Digby was not too happy with this pass on the bench immediately after.

My Three Stars

3-Stephen Johnson

The senior defenseman was very good yet again at both ends of the ice. Johnson was able to tally eight shots on the night, score a goal and leave the ice a +4. Johnson is now the leading point-getter out of all SUNYAC defenseman and is tied for 11th in overall scoring in the SUNYAC as well. Johnson was also very good in his own zone tonight again, something that Gosek said earlier this week goes unnoticed a lot.

“Everybody looks at his offensive side, but I don’t think they give him enough credit defensively,” Gosek said. “He’s been very good defensively. Very rarely do you see him get beat on one-on-one. Very rarely do you see him lose his man in coverage. His gap has improved over his three years here. His awareness in our defensive zone, with sealing off, boxing out, fronting guys. I think he’s the hybrid defenseman that can go either way in a defensive scheme.”

2-Matt Galati

The senior power forward put himself just one point shy of reaching the 100-point club last night after his three-point night. He scored the opening marker and assisted on the Neil and Herlihey goals. His entire line was very good all night pressuring in the offensive zone and creating more quality scoring chances for themselves because of their hard work.

1-Andrew Barton

Barton scored his third of the season tonight and tallied two more assists. He continued his success in the faceoff dot, winning 14 of 22 draws. That was the highest total of any Oswego State centerman as well. This also led to more zone time and more chances for that second line of Herlihey-Barton-Galati.

The Big Man

Charlie Pelnik did not have his best game in his young career as a Laker. The former University of North Dakota commit, in a game where Morrisville State wore the exact jersey template as the Fighting Sioux, took a penalty just 18 seconds into the game. He took another in the middle frame and also failed to get the puck out on a play that led to the only Mustangs’ goal of the night.

Pelnik is 6’5″ and plays a physical breed of hockey; that is clear. His second penalty of the night was him completely mauling Ryan Bochert after the play started started off with Pelnik just trying to keep Bochert away from getting any potential rebounds in front. The crowd definitely loved it, but head coach Ed Gosek did not seem too pleased with this penalty after the game. 

“Everybody in the building, including every referee, is watching you, you have to have more discipline,” Gosek said. “He understands. None of the guys want to put themselves in front of the team, and that’s really how we word it. I don’t know if it was selfish as much as untimely and uncalled for.”

Pelnik did settle down after this. He did not lose any ice time and actually played a pretty solid third period, and his long reach was evident on more than a few plays. Pelnik is still learning and soon – but probably not this year – will blossom into a big net-front presence and solid top-four defenseman for the Lakers.

Gosek did mention JJ Hart and his impressive game on Friday night against Morrisville State immediately after that quote. Gosek also noted that Sean Federow could return from injury shortly. This might mean it may be awhile before we see Pelnik draw back into the lineup.

But the Pelnik death stare will always live on. Lets face it, he took Bochert’s soul with that look.

A Real Test

Oswego State was pretty fortunate to have played the now last-place Morrisville State Mustangs this weekend after the holiday break. It was a good tune up before a big road swing to Western New York to take on two good teams in the SUNY Fredonia Blue Devils and Buffalo State Bengals. Buffalo State should prove to be the bigger challenge for the Lakers of the two games, but both teams are far better than the Morrisville State team the Lakers just ran out of town.

The Bengals just beat the No. 4/5 SUNY Geneseo Knights 4-1 on Saturday night. The Bengals also beat SUNY Plattsburgh earlier this season. SUNY Fredonia has not lost to Buffalo State this year. The Blue Devils tied the Bengals 1-1 after beating them in the season opener, 4-2.

Buffalo State should jump back into the rankings this week after dropping out of last week’s polls. The Bengals are currently allowing 1.55 goals a game and are second in the SUNYAC in that category.  The Lakers, after Saturday night’s win, lead the SUNYAC is goals per game (5.44) and goals against per game (1.33). Hockey fans should be in for quite a treat during this game in less than a week.

If Oswego State can go on the road again and grab four points from these two SUNYAC foes, it will really show that this team has something special brewing. Oswego State proved it could get the job done in one of the toughest places to play in the SUNYAC in its win over SUNY Plattsburgh.

Can the Lakers do it again? Your gut should give you a good feeling with the way this team is scoring goals right now.