Buffalo (Shuffling Off from Buffalo with Four NJPHL Wins)

 October 17-18

After a weekend off, the Little Caps resumed NJPHL league play with a showcase in Buffalo.  They took their unbeaten NJPHL perfect record and themselves on a team bus trip up north.  While there, the Little Caps would see two different Pittsburgh teams as well as two from western New York, including the host Buffalo Stars team.  The perfect record in NJPHL remained intact, despite a close call from the first game against the Pittsburgh Predators.

In that first game, the Little Caps were matched against the only other unbeaten (at the time) team, the Pittsburgh Predators.  Both teams were tentative in the first period, sizing each other up, while the crowd wondered who would strike first.  The “southern line” of Matthew Jahn, Peyton Nash and Richie Kaye had the big Pittsburgh goalie’s number, as Jahn scored first to go up by one in the second period.  Jahn would notch another goal, again with assists from Nash and Kaye, to make it 2-0.  Pittsburgh had a goal waved off as they kicked the puck into the net, and the game became even chippier.  Eighteen different penalties were assessed during the game, but neither team could convert on any of the resulting power plays.  Jahn’s two goals held up, and the Little Caps handed the Predators their first and only loss of the weekend.  Later that afternoon, the Little Caps beat the Southern Tier Junior Express 7-1.  Twelve different WLC skaters registered at least a point.  Richie Kaye paced the Little Caps with 2 goals, while Jared Lechner and Cade Groton each added one.  Both Jacob Goble and Geoff Kostrzebski also tallied for local Buffalo-area grandparents.         

On Saturday morning, the Little Caps played the other Pittsburgh area team, the Vengeance.  Trent DeNuccio had a hat trick plus an assist to pace the Little Caps with 4 total points and jump to the current scoring lead of the league (10-11-21 line in 8 games).  Another 1999, defenseman Theo Lenz jumped up into the rush and scored as well in the second period.  Lenz added 6 points for the four game weekend.  Cade Groton also scored, as he and linemate David Leitzel chipped in two points each, as did 1999 defenseman Alec Freyberger.  Goalie Kyle Henderson made 11 saves in the win.

For the last game against the vastly overmatched host Buffalo Stars, the Little Caps had fifteen skaters register at least a point in the 10-0 dismantling of the Stars.  In fact, the third period saw the Little Caps back off and play a 1-3-1 team defense to stop Buffalo from being even able to enter the zone.  Greg Zhelobitckii started the party with his first NJPHL goal in the first period.  He would score again as well.  Sage Bittinger-Esser also notched his first NJPHL goal in the first period, and then quickly struck again as well for a pair as well.  Ethan Roth had three saves, including one in the last few seconds, to preserve the shutout win.  The four big wins made the long drive home early the next morning a little more palatable