Box Score SOUTH BURLINGTON, Vt. – The Norwich University men's ice hockey team scored five goals before the midway point of the first period, en route to a dominant 9-0 victory over Saint Michael's on Friday night at Cairns Arena.
Norwich (14-1-1, 10-0-0 ECAC East) had 14 different skaters register points led by sophomore forward William Pelletier (St. Jean Chrysostome, Quebec), who continued his blistering scoring pace with two goals and two assists for four points.
Junior forward Dean Niezgoda (Brewster, Mass.) and freshman forward Kevin Salvucci (Plymouth, Mass.) chipped in offensively with two goals and an assist and three assists respectively to lead the Norwich offense on the night.
The trio combined to score Norwich's first goal 2:37 into the game with Pelletier notching his ninth of the season off assists from Salvucci and Niezgoda. Pelletier slipped a rebound into the net after an initial shot by Salvucci was turned aside.
Senior forward Nevin Lawler (Fitchburg, Mass.) made it 2-0 less than two minutes later with an assist from sophomore Anthony Flaherty (South Boston, Mass.). Lawler took a pass from Flaherty streaking down the right side, took an initial shot and buried his rebound chance for his fourth goal of the season.
Niezgoda scored just 12 seconds after Lawler's goal to force Saint Michael's to pull starting goalie Dave Donzanti and call a timeout trailing 3-0 just 4:33 into the game.
Norwich was far from done though as Brendan Boyce (St. Albans, Vt.) and Gerard McEleney (Canton, Mass.) scored just nine seconds apart to pull Saint Michael's second goalie Michael Comitini from the game and put Donzanti back in with the Cadets leading 5-0.
Norwich went on to add four more goals with Pelletier, Niezgoda, Trevor Stewart (Denver, Colo.) and Nick Pichette (Massena, N.Y.) all scoring goals.
Norwich outshot Saint Michael's 38-17, including a 32-11 edge after two periods. Sophomore goalie Ty Reichenbach (Billings, Mont.) made 13 saves through 45 minutes of work to improve to 7-0-1 on the season. Senior goalie Matic Marinsek (Ljubljana, Slovenia) came on for the final 15 minutes and made four saves.
Donzanti made 26 saves on 33 shots to take the loss for Saint Michael's to fall to 5-6-2 on the year.
Senior defenseman Alec Thieda (Rochester Hills, Mich.) played in the 100th game of his Norwich career and also notched an assist, which was his 50th point of his career.
Saint Michael's dropped to 5-8-2 overall and 4-5-1 in league. The Cadets are now four points clear of UMass Boston and five points clear of Babson in the ECAC East standings, but both teams have one game in hand on Norwich.
Norwich will look to continue its win streak on Saturday when it travels to Middlebury to take on the Panthers at 7 p.m. in a non-conference matchup at the Chip Kenyon '85 Arena.
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