PLATTSBURGH — It was going to happen sooner or later. The Plattsburgh State men’s hockey team was going to lose a game.
It came Saturday night and, unfortunately, it was arguably to the Cardinals’ biggest rival in the SUNYAC.
Oswego State (7-4, 6-1) skated to a 5-3 victory over top-ranked Plattsburgh (9-0, 5-1) on Stress Ball night at the Stafford Ice Arena.
It was an uphill battle all evening for the Cardinals, who were coming off a 6-1 win over Cortland the night before. Plattsburgh fell behind, 2-0, and the Cardinals hurt themselves with mistakes while trying to come back.
“The guys worked hard,” Plattsburgh head coach Steve Moffat said. “I was happy with the way we were playing five-on-five.
“But we took foolish penalties when we were on the power play and you can’t have that when you’re trying to come back in a game.”
The Cardinals made mental mistakes, turnovers and had penalty issues, including another five-minute major and ejection.
“That can’t happen against a good team like Oswego because they will capitalize on our mistakes,” Moffat said.
The Cardinals held a 42-26 advantage in shots on goal and kept competing to the end until the Lakers applied the finishing touch on Thomas Rocco’s empty-net goal with less than a second remaining.
Oswego goalie Cal Schell was a standout in the game, stopping 39 of the 42 shots that came his way.
The Lakers grabbed the lead for good when Shane Bull scored a power-play goal at 12:19 of the first period to make it 1-0.
“I felt we had a couple of really good looks in the first period,” Moffat said. “I thought we did a good job creating opportunities up top, but missed the net on a lot of our shots.”
A Plattsburgh turnover early in the second period resulted in Brock Krulicki’s goal at 1:16 for a 2-0 Oswego lead.
Lonan Bulger’s power-play goal at 4:38 pulled the Cardinals to within one, but Oswego regained a two-goal lead when Daniel Colabufo scored at 12:31 with the teams skating four-aside.
Once again, the Cardinals cut their deficit to one on Bennett Stockdale’s goal at 18:24. But any momentum Plattsburgh would have had entering the third period was taken away on Tyler Flack’s goal just 18 seconds later to make it 4-2.
Stockdale’s power-play goal, his second goal of the game, did give the Cardinals life early in the third period at 3:10, making it 4-3. Plattsburgh, however, couldn’t get the equalizer.
Jacob Hearne stopped 21 of 25 shots in the Plattsburgh nets.
“I don’t want to take anything away from Oswego, but we beat ourselves tonight,” Moffat said.
The Cardinals will close out their first semester of play with conference games at Buffalo State Friday night (7 p.m.) and at Fredonia Saturday afternoon (4 p.m.).
“We have two big games this coming weekend and hopefully we have a good week of practice,” Moffat said. “We will evaluate things and we’ll know in our next game if we’ve learned from our mistakes.”
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Oswego 5, Plattsburgh 3
OSU 1 3 1 — 5
PHS 0 2 1 — 3
First period- 1, Osw, Bull ppg (Flack, Gatto), 12:19.
Second period- 2, Osw, Krulicki, 1:16. 3, PSU, Bulger ppg (Stockdale, Ring), 4:33. 4, Osw, Colabufo (Warmuth, Balah), 12:31. 5, PSU, Stockdale (D’Addario, Lanyi), 18:24. 6, Osw, Flack (Bull, Francis), 18:42.
Third period- 7, PSU, Stockdale ppg (Bulger, Lanyi), 3:10. 8, Osw, Rocco eng (Barrett), 19:59.3.
Shots on goal- Plattsburgh, 42-26.
Saves- Schell, Osw, 39. Hearne, PSU, 21.