Bengals pull off upset of Cardinals

Buffalo State opened its 2011-12 home schedule by splitting a pair of games, losing to Potsdam on Friday, 3-2, and defeating nationally-ranked Plattsburgh on Saturday, 4-3.

Picking up a win on Saturday was very important for the Bengals' morale after losing the home opener the day before.

"Last night (against Potsdam) was a good lesson for us," head coach Nick Carriere said. "We watched a lot of video after and talked a lot about our game and improving on what we needed to.

"We're very happy with how our guys reacted to that," he continued. "They really embraced the simple things that we wanted in our gameplan."

Junior forward Trevor McKinney agreed, saying that the team was motivated by their opponent's success on Saturday.

"Our team put in a lot of hard work tonight," McKinney said. "We didn't really show up for last night's game, but tonight, we knew Plattsburgh was the fifth-ranked team in the country, so we had to go out there and take it to them every period."

The Bengals (3-2) opened their game against Potsdam by quickly establishing the lead. Junior forward Drew Klin scored the team's first goal just 1:12 into the first period off of an assist by senior captain James Durham.

Later in the first period, sophomore defenseman Anthony Orange scored to give the Bengals a 2-0 lead. Klin and junior defenseman Zach Hale assisted on the goal.

The lead wouldn't be enough, however, as Potsdam scored three unanswered goals to earn the win.

Sophomore goaltender Kevin Carr finished with 28 saves in the losing effort.

On Saturday against Plattsburgh, Buffalo State was in control throughout the game. Goals by Klin and McKinney gave the team a 2-1 lead early in the second period.

Sophomore forward Dave Lansdowne notched the team's third goal of the game and senior forward Justin Knee added the game-winning goal midway through the third period. Sophomore forward Kyle Whipple led the Bengals with two assists during the contest, and Carr made 25 saves for his third win of the season.

Buffalo State never trailed during the contest, in large part due to their stellar penalty-killing units. Plattsburgh managed to score only once during seven power plays, improving the Bengals' penalty kill to 25-29 (86 percent) on the season.

"Tweaking a couple things on special teams was a goal of ours coming into the season," Carriere said. "We've been fortunate early on and we want to continue to do good things and give ourselves chances to win."

One problem that has been a thorn in the Bengals' side this season is the lack of an effective power play. The team wasn't able to score with the man-advantage over the weekend despite having ten opportunities to do so.

"We've been able to get puck movement on our power plays, but it's a matter of getting the puck in the net and getting rebounds," Klin said. "We're not connecting as much as we would like, and we've got a little bit of work to do in that area, but I think we'll be fine as the season goes on."

The Bengals will have their work cut out for them in their next two games, as they're set to host Cortland on Friday and No. 1 Oswego on Saturday. Faceoff for both games is set at 7 pm.

"Cortland's a scary team," Carriere said. "We had a lot of trouble with them last year, so we have some extra motivation for Friday night. Oswego… they're the number one team in the country. We've never beat them, so those are going to be two huge games for us."

Tony Fiorello can be reached at fiorello.record@live.com