Posts from ‘November, 2008’

The way the Brooklyn Aces offense has played this season, it’s easy to forget that they are human beings and not the super heroes that have been consistently scoring a half dozen goals a night.

Nevertheless, even on an “off” night offensively, the Aces still got a more than quality performance from Eddie Neville, who made 34 saves in a 3-2 Aces shootout victory over the Danbury Mad Hatters.

In spite of Neville’s performance however, Danbury goaltender Derek MacIntyre was the real star of the game, stopping 54 of 56 shots, effectively keeping his team above water against the leagues top offense.

Brooklyn jumped out to an early 1-0 lead off a Rob Miller powerplay goal, but Danbury leading scorer Igor Karlov answered back 5:02 later with a powerplay marker of his own, tying the score at 1-1. The BMT line of James Brannigan, Kyle McCollaugh and C.J. Tozzo came through in the second, as Brannigan notched his 15th goal of the season, giving Brooklyn a 2-1 lead.

According to a press release by the EPHL, Aces forward Chris Holmes and backup goaltender Miro Recicar have been called up to Elmira Jackals of the ECHL.

One part of the Aces highly successful second line of Mike Christensen and Jesse Felten, Holmes had four goals and six assists in eight games in Brooklyn this season. A point a game player last season in the MAHL, Holmes rejoins the Jackals, a team he played 10 games with last season.

Leading the EPHL in wins, despite sharing goaltending duties with Eddie Neville, Recicar was solid in Brooklyn, going 4-0 with a 3.50 GAA this season.

This will be his first taste of the ECHL.

To counteract these losses, the Aces have signed forward Nate Bostic, who has gone scoreless in nine games with season with the New Mexico Scorpions and Richmond Renegades of the CHL & SPHL and goaltender Eric Galliond, who looks to be the backup goaltender behind the surging Neville.

Coming off of a 7-2 win against Hudson Valley on Wednesday night, the Brooklyn Aces take on the Danbury Mad Hatters tonight at the Danbury Ice Arena fully prepared to keep their five-game winning streak alive.

With all three lines firing on all cylinders and even spot shifters like Ian McLoughlin and captain Chad Wilcox playing their best hockey all season, Brooklyn’s offense alone is enough to skate the daylights out of any team that shares the ice with them.

Unlike the Aces however, Danbury has struggled offensively this season and have only two players averaging over a point a game, compared to Brooklyn’s 11. That wasn’t originally supposed to be the case though, as Danbury possessed former NHLer Billy Tibbetts, who was not only projected to lead the team and league offensively, but was going to serve as a constant reminder to the youngsters as a player that knew what it took to get to higher levels.

Through the first eight games of the EPHL’s inaugural season, the Brooklyn Aces have flown high above the competition, amassing a 7-1 record while leaving a trail of smoke over their opponents, outscoring them 52-23.

However, despite possessing the league’s best overall defense, that features talented two-way defensemen such as Rob Miller, Nick Grove, Andrew Scampoli and Doug Hoffman, in addition to the rock-solid goaltender combo of Eddie Neville and Miro Recicar, the Aces offense has been the real story of their magical season.

Nonetheless, while the Aces have gotten offense from a variety of sources, the team’s first line, aptly tabbed “The BMT Line,” of James Brannigan, Kyle McCollaugh and C.J. Tozzo, have left their opponents in pieces, ranking first, second and third in team and league scoring.

“They really work well together,” said Aces head coach Chris Firriolo. “They are definitely a top line in this league, for sure.”

For most of the season, all the talk regarding the Brooklyn Aces has been about the team’s top scoring line and goaltender Eddie Neville. Last night at the Ice Time Sports Complex, the rest of the Aces pulled off their best Joe Cocker impersonation and “Got by with a little help from their friends.”

Led by goaltender Miro Reciciar’s 22 saves and a five point night from Aces speedy newbie Tony Resendes, the Aces coasted to a 7-2 win over the Hudson Valley Bears.

Despite the emergence of Resendes and another solid performance from Recicar [who has responded marvelously after giving up six goals a few weeks ago against the Bears] the Aces got offense from all three lines, as tallies by James Brannigan, B.J. Kuper, Mike Christensen and Mike “shooter” Thomson and two assist nights from Chris Holmes and team captain and enforcer Chad Wilcox fueled a 51 shot performance and another dominating win.

Tonight’s pre-thanksgiving battle between the Brooklyn Aces [6-1] and Hudson Valley Bears should be an intriguing contest to say the very least, as both teams seem headed in completely different directions.

Despite picking up former Aces Jerry Cardinale and Dan Rohanna [who has yet to appear in a game for the team and may be still nursing a hand injury he suffered two weeks ago in a fight with Joe Pelle. However, at this time, his current status is unknown.] last week, the Bears [1-4] were defeated 9-2 by Brooklyn in their last game on Saturday. In spite of possessing a handful of capable offensive players in Chris Seifert [4 goals & 5 assists, good for 4th in the EPHL in scoring], former Ace Scott Estey [4 goals & 4 assists good for 6th in the EPHL in scoring] Scott Horvath [1 goal & 7 assists] and Dan Malloy, the Bears have looked out of sync on the ice this season.

Here we go again boys and girls, time for another podcast. This time around, I interview Aces second line center Mike Christensen, who talks about what it’s like to play with Jesse Felten and Chris Holmes, in addition to discussing some of the players he tries to emulate while on the ice.

Check it out!

As always, you can listen directly here at: http://media.switchpod.com/users/patrickhickeyjr1/AOB1126.mp3

Or you can download the file on to your I-Pod or I-Phone here:

http://phobos.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewPodcast?id=294739484

I conducted this interview on Wednesday last week, just two days before I received word Cardinale was put on waivers by the Aces. However, the guy was so entertaining and honest that I decided to run it anyway. It’s not like the Hudson Valley site is chock full of player profiles anyway, so I figured this article could serve two purposes. One, to let Aces fans out there see what Cardinale was all about and second, to give the Hudson Valley fans a deeper look into one of the most popular players in the Aces short history.

When 11 skaters on your team have at least three shots on goal and every player but one has a point, there aren’t many other ways to describe it.

Offensive domination.

Scoring eight unanswered goals to start the game, the Aces ran all over the Bears and for the fourth game in a row, they hit the back of the net at least seven times. Like most of the season, the Aces offense came from a variety of sources, as Chris Holmes, C.J. Tozzo and James Brannigan netted two goals apiece, while Mike “shooter” Thomson, Kyle McCullough and B.J. Kuper had tallies of their own. McCullough also had two assists on the night, giving him 11 on the season for the league lead.

Like their last three games, the Aces defense and goaltending was extremely solid as well, with backup goaltender Miro Recicar making 24 saves for his third win of the season.

This should be a very interesting game to watch. Not only because the Aces barely squeaked out a 7-6 win when these two teams played each other last week, but because of the fact that both Dan Rohanna and Jerry Cardinale were added to the Bears roster yesterday.

After speaking to various members of the team and the Aces coach Chris Firriolo yesterday, I got a feeling those rosters moves were made for a variety of reasons:

1- On any other team in this league, Cardinale gets a regular shift, as to the Aces where he and new captain Chad Wilcox were only getting spot shifted.

2- The Aces team is stacked from top to bottom and a guy like Cardinale could really help the Bears round out their top two lines or be a extremely solid grinder on the third.