Drury Icers Overcome Penalties, Beat Mount Everett

NORTH ADAMS, Mass. -- Druy’s Omar Uqdah scored a short-handed goal in the final minute to dash Mount Everett’s hopes for a comeback and secure a 4-2 win for the Blue Devils on Wednesday at Peter W. Foote Vietnam Veterans Memorial Rink.

 

“Omar put the team on his back in the last couple of minutes there,” Drury coach Derek Durocher said. “Not just with the goal, but the penalty kill leading up to the goal and after.

 

“He had a good night. He can be a goal scorer. He can do a lot of things positively for us. We hope that he keeps riding it.”

 

Uqdah scored the first goal of the game as well for Drury (1-2). It was fitting that his second goal came when the Blue Devils were two men down. It seemed like Drury spent half the night with a player in the penalty box.

 

“We’re certainly concerned about the number of minutes we spent in the penalty box,” Durocher said. “We’ll look at film and address that.

 

“Our special teams got a workout today, and they did a fantastic job.”

 

Mount Everett (0-2) went 2-for-10 on the power play. One of those goals came on a two-man advantage with keeper Jack Seward-Dailey (34 saves) pulled in the final minute.

 

“It took us a while to get our power play set up,” Mount Everett coach Aidan Gilligan said. “For the first two and a half periods, I felt we just kind of tried to do too much individually instead of moving the puck as a team.

 

“The second half of the third period, we did a better job setting up with what we’re trying to do on the power play. We moved the puck, got a couple of backdoor looks, and were able to bury one of them.”

 

Uqdah gave Drury an early lead when he picked up the puck at the red line and took it into the zone before beating Seward-Dailey in the third minute of play.

 

Drury doubled its lead before the end of the first period. Samuel Garvey stopped a Mount Everett clearance attempt along the boards on the right wing and sent the puck back into the corner for Camden Abel.

 

Abel then skated along the back boards and scored on a nifty wraparound to give Drury a 2-0 lead.

 

But Mount Everett ended the period on its third power play of the game and started the second period with another man-advantage just 1 minute, 38 seconds in. Nearly two minutes into that power play, Josh Hunter sent a puck in from the point that Caleb Kollmer redirected past Drury goalie Nate Haley (25 saves) to make it 2-1.

 

Drury scored a power play goal on its third chance of the night midway through the period. Brandon Lincoln notched the unassisted goal to again make it a two-goal margin.

 

The Blue Devils killed off two third-period power plays -- including a five-minute major -- to preserve that lead.

 

But with 1:28 on the clock, two Blue Devils went to the box.

 

Gilligan pulled Seward-Dailey to establish a 6-on-3, and Dylan Boomsma scored with assists from Cam Raifstanger and Josh Hunter to get their team within a goal.

 

Just six seconds later, though, Uqdah put the game back out of reach.

 

“It was fun to find some offense, finally,” Durocher said. “We’ve struggled with that in our first two games. And I think we could have seen more offense if we had had more 5-on-5 hockey. So I’m optimistic about the fact that the offense may be getting going. It was good to see them have a fast start tonight.”

 

On Saturday, Drury goes to Greenfield while Mount Everett hosts Chicopee.