FAIRVIEW HEIGHTS • Not surprisingly, O'Fallon hockey coach Ken Barnhill was pleased with his team's offensive output in Thursday's 8-2 win over Belleville East at the U.S. Ice Sports Complex.
But Barnhill was equally satisfied with the defensive effort of the Panthers, who are off to a 2-0 start while outscoring their opponents 17-2.
"I couldn't be happier with the all-around team performance," Barnhill said. "We have some young and old leadership on this team and we've really come together."
The loss dropped East to 0-2.
"I can't think of too many solid goals that they scored against us tonight," Lancers coach John Thompson said. "We pretty much carried the play, but we didn't get a lot of goaltending. Sometimes the other guys have to pick the goalie up, but we didn't do a lot of the things that we wanted to do."
Ruben Chavarria led the way for O'Fallon with three goals and an assist. Henry Hunsaker had two goals and two assists, while Austin Graf had a goal and four assists.
"We put our players where we needed to be and did everything we needed to do," O'Fallon senior forward Ian Wilson said. "We brought our 'A' game against a team that definitely could have turned it the other way around."
O'Fallon scored on its first shot at the 1:08 mark of the first period, as Chavarria broke in on the left wing and beat East goalie John Fink. The assists went to Graf and Hunsaker.
A short-handed goal by Graf made the score 2-0 at 8:09. Two minutes later, Chavarria's second goal of the game, again from the left side, gave the Panthers a 3-0 lead after one period.
"Justin Lewis, our goalie, kept us in it with everything he had," O'Fallon junior defenseman Aaron York said. "Offensively, if we get the puck in the hands of the right guys, we can produce a lot of goals."
A rash of penalties by O'Fallon nearly let East get back in the game early in the second period. Just 22 seconds in, the Lancers' Nick Edwards scored on a two-man advantage. The Panthers again had two men in the box less than a minute later, but Mitch Barnhill put in a rebound for a short-handed goal at 1:41.
"We've had really good teamwork and we're communicating on the ice," Barnhill said. "We had a couple fluke penalties, but we've been good at keeping our heads in the game."
At the 3:12 mark, East's Zach Thompson took a penalty for unsportsmanlike conduct. Six seconds later, Brett Maggio scored to boost O'Fallon's lead to 5-1.
"We lost our focus for a little while, but luckily the boys were able to regain it," Ken Barnhill said.
Goals by Hunsaker and Graf made the score 7-1 before Thompson scored with 19 seconds left in the period.
The only goal of the third period came with 39 seconds remaining, as Chavarria got the hat trick off a pass from Josh Ourada.
In an earlier game at the U.S. Ice Sports Complex:
Triad 10, Highland 0: Tyler Lewis and Keaton Wright each had two goals and three assists and Nick Faulkner had a goal and four assists as the Knights (2-1) cruised to an easy victory. Highland, which was outshot 44-7, fell to 0-2.
"Those are three good players," Triad coach Roger Lewis said. "Highland is down in numbers this year and they don't have a lot of experience and they're doing the best they can.
"We tried to get some of our younger guys in the game, but the down side of this is that we've got a very good Columbia team coming up and we didn't get our top two lines very much ice time. Even our other guys were scoring some goals tonight."
Triad put early pressure on Highland goalie R.J. Arend and took a 1-0 lead on a goal by Wright 44 seconds into the game. The Knights went on to score six more goals in the first period.
With Trevor Klostermann taking over the goaltending duties in the second period, Triad got a pair of short-handed goals by Brendon Evanoff and Aaron Rogers. Wright scored early in the third period to close out the scoring for the Knights.
Triad goalie Nick Magrath didn't get much work, but he posted his second straight shutout after a rough start in a 6-5 season-opening loss to Collinsville.
"Hopefully he has some confidence and he can give us a big game Tuesday night against Columbia," Lewis said.
"We've always had a pretty solid defense and with our offense right now, we're pretty strong," said Magrath, who made 10 saves in a 10-0 win over Jerseyville. "It's not easy replacing Brendan Wright (last year's starting goalie), but I'm starting to feel a lot better about this."
