During the regular season, the Aces were an absolute juggernaut on offense, producing six 20-goal scorers and 11 players with over 30 points. In the playoffs however, the team was limited to just eight goals in three games, which ultimately played a huge part in their demise this post-season.
Despite posting 21 shots in the three game series, Aces leading scorer and EPHL rookie of the year C.J. Tozzo scored only once. That’s not to say that Tozzo was ineffective, quite the contrary, but his teammates weren’t positioning themselves in front of the net to take care of the rebounds his shots produced.
Aces forward Tony Resendes said after game three that the team knew that Jersey goaltender Nick Niedert had problems controlling his rebounds and one of their main goals in the series was to induce those second chance opportunities and to get traffic in front, which was one of the reasons why the speedster was continually following up his shots in the series. It didn’t happen often enough however and that is one of the reasons why the team’s offense produced as little as it did.
