By Bryce Tinsley ‘23

The Brother Rice Crusaders hockey team suffered a 3-1 loss after a hard-fought three periods against the St. Ignatius Wolfpack. The Crusaders fell to a record of 3-2-0, while the Wolfpack rose to 5-0-0.

The first period was a defensive one, with sophomore goalie Deven Stillo allowing 0 goals on 11 shots. The Crusaders also remained scoreless with only 4 shots on net.

In the second period, the Wolfpack netted one of 10 shots. The Crusaders answered shortly after with an unassisted breakaway goal from senior Jakub Potoczny.

Potoczny said, “There was so much going through my mind on that rush; I was trying to read the goalie and see if he was leaving anything open. The defensemen were right behind me; so I knew I had to make a split second decision. I don’t know how it went in, I’m just grateful it did.”

Coach Ralph Lawrence said, “The energy in the locker room was phenomenal; we felt like we played hard the last two periods. We’d like to have more shots on net, but we felt like we had good net presence, and we feel like we’re outplaying them. So we’re coming into the third making a couple little adjustments, but the guys are ready to go.”

At the drop of the puck in the third, the Crusaders were unlucky, trying everything they could to get the puck on their sticks. The Wolfpack kept applying pressure; after a bad bounce, they had the lead again. Playing down a goal, the Crusaders came back strong but did not prevail.

The Wolfpack scored once more, further stretching the lead to 3-1. As the minutes turned to seconds, the Crusaders did not give up. Getting the puck deep in the offensive zone, they took shot after shot. The Ignatius goalie stood strong and did not let up anything-only allowing one goal on twenty shots for the night.

After the game, senior Jack McGuffage said, “It was a really good game. We didn’t win, but that’s not a show of good or bad games. The team played well and we still have many games ahead of us. This won’t affect us in the long run and we’ll play even harder for our game tomorrow.”