WINCHENDON, Mass. – Senior Trey Aiello (Williamsburg, Va.) of the Saint Anselm College men's ice hockey team scored three goals, including the game-winner with 33 seconds left in regulation time to lift the Hawks to a 4-3 road victory at Franklin Pierce University on Friday.
Box Score
With the win, Saint Anselm moves to 12-11-2 overall on the year and to 7-6-2 against Northeast-10 Conference opponents. Franklin Pierce falls to 13-10-4 overall and to 6-6-3 versus the league. The two teams battle once again on Saturday, Feb. 15 at 5 p.m. in Winchendon.
The second hat trick of Aiello's career, and first since Nov. 24, 2018 at Wesleyan (Conn.), helped the Hawks move into third place in the NE10 standings. Saint Anselm was able to snap its five-game winless streak that dated to Jan. 28, despite scoring four goals in four of the last five games.
Down by a 3-2 margin heading into the third period, senior Mike Ferraro (Northbridge, Mass.) drew the game even at 13:40, scoring off assists from Matt Chisholm (Scituate, Mass.) and Sean Healy (Quincy, Mass.) to set up Aiello's heroics. After a Franklin Pierce time-out in the game's final minute, Aiello responded shortly thereafter, putting home the game-winning marker with 33 seconds left in regulation time.
Aiello broke the game open with less than four minutes to go in the first period, putting home a rebound off a Sean Verrier (Reading, Mass.) shot to create a 1-0 lead for the visitors. Jason Ladzinski responded less than two minutes later for Franklin Pierce, taking advantage of a Hawks hooking penalty to tie the score heading into the first intermission.
Aiello opened the scoring only 1:26 into the second stanza, firing a laser from between the hash marks in his second goal of the game off assists from Verrier and senior Liam O'Sullivan (North Hampton, N.H.). Franklin Pierce scored the game's next two goals, using tallies from Chris Stevenson and Alex Lester in the final 10 minutes of the period to take a 3-2 edge heading into the third.
Hawks backstop Michal Soustal (Unicov, Czech Republic) made 26 saves in the victory while his counterpart from Franklin Pierce, Ian Wallace, conceded four goals on 33 shots. Saint Anselm owned the 33-26 edge in shots taken but was held scoreless on the power play (0-for-2) – the Ravens notched an extra-man goal in one of their two opportunities.
