RUTLAND, Vt. – Despite two assists each from Brendon Kerrigan and Justin Longo, the Saint Anselm College men's hockey team dropped its season opener 5-3 at Castleton in New England Hockey Conference play on Friday evening at Spartan Arena.

Box Score

Saint Anselm (0-1-0, 0-1-0 NEHC) cut a 3-1 deficit to 3-2 with over 12 minutes to go in the third but Castleton (2-0-1, 1-0-0 NEHC) netted a pair of empty-net goals 44 seconds apart in the final two minutes to end the comeback attempt. Jon Pallotta, CJ Blaszka and Patrick Horrocks accounted for the three goals for the Hawks.

Trailing 3-1 after two, the Hawks got within a goal at 7:23 of the third period after a power-play goal by Blaszka that was set up by Kerrigan and Peter Sikalis. However, the Spartans maintained the one-goal advantage for the next 10 minutes and tacked on empty-net goals from Henning Dahlberg and Patrick Thornton to go up three with 1:05 left.

Saint Anselm got one of the empty-net goals back with 38 seconds to go as Patrick Horrocks buried a wrist shot from the top of the right circle to close the scoring.

Castleton got the scoring started on the power play at 8:30 of the first through Nick Kovalchik, who redirected a Brock Lebelle wrister to give the Spartans the lead. The hosts added a second power-play goal at 4:08 of the second period on a Bart Moran goal.

Pallotta scored the Hawks' first goal of the season at 6:12 of the second to cut the Spartans' lead in half off an assist from Longo. Pallotta's goal came as he banked the puck in off of goaltender Ryan Mulder's skate. Before the second period was up, Castleton went back up by two as Caleb Fizer set up Ryan Smith in transition at 15:38.

Castleton held a slender 30-28 edge in shots on goal in the game. Mulder made 25 saves to improve to 2-0-1 for the Spartans, while Shane Joyce also made 25 stops for the Hawks but took the loss. Castleton was 2-for-6 on the power play, while the Hawks were 1-for-3.

Saint Anselm finishes its opening weekend at Skidmore at 4 p.m. on Saturday, Nov. 5.