Clarkstown Dominates Tappan Zee/Nyack in Shellacking

Hockey is one of the few sports where the term “running up the score” is never used.

The reason being that lighting the lamp is so difficult—and at times uncontrollable with so many weird bounces—that the winners never really outscore their losers by more than three goals.

At Wednesday night’s Pounding at the Palisades between Clarkstown and Tappan Zee/Nyack, nobody was talking about running up the score, they were discussing just how good Clarkstown looked—and how utterly listless the Ice Hawks were.

The tone was set right from the first drop of the puck when Coach Rich Willow’s squad sustained offensive zone pressure for more than five minutes. At first it appeared as though Jake Sullivan was going to keep his Ice Hawks in the game with his marvelous play. However Steven Marvin made a beautiful feed to linemate Greg Sanfratello at 13:16 and Samfratello buried it for the game’s first goal. That was all the scoring there was in the first period, an astounding fact because Captain Steven Marvin and Co. put 13 shots on goal.

From that point on, the ice was tilted in Clarkstown’s favor. The goals just kept coming. And coming. And coming. It was as if the Hawks were just a step slow to every loose puck, inexcusable considering the team they were playing had a game the day before.

The second frame picked up where the end of the first left off. Nick Sassano scored two goals in thirteen seconds (the second was set up by a gorgeous pass from Nick Kim) and Maurice Murphy, the team’s leading scorer, tallied another just 31 ticks later, at 2:31. Just like that, the Ice Hawks found themselves trailing 4-0, even though it seemed like 10-0 at that point. Before the middle period came to a close, Clarkstown would add four more, with Luke Myers, Adam Marvin, Abe Leider, and Joe Tokarczyk doing the honors. Really the only story to come out of the game for Tappan Zee/Nyack was when forward/defenseman Brian Bermingham got tossed from the game for shouting obscenities at an official with 1:15 remaining in the period. Clarkstown would tally their seventh of the frame just twenty seconds afterward.

In the third period, Coach Willows and his players kept their collective foot on the gas with two more celebrations in the first 2:24 of play. Leider would score his second with the assist going to Eric Menninger, and Kyle Ryder put one in off feeds from Michael Diskin and Myers. A little over three minutes later, Clarkstown took their third penalty of the contest. It seemed as though  power play was the only time the game was “even”. Adding insult to injury, Donald McIntyre, Ryder, and Myers would proceed to score late in the period.

Clarkstown thoroughly outplayed the Ice Hawks for the entire game by leaps and bounds, and it showed on the scoreboard, with the final score being a dumbfounding 13-0. The winners will have a week to celebrate their victory before a big matchup against Suffern.