RAYNHAM – One was close, the other not so much as the best of the best in the Bantam Division took the ice at the Raynham IcePlex this weekend for the New England Future Stars’ annual All-Star Saturday festivities. The Norfolk County Hawks just eeked out a victory in the Skills Challenge, while the explosive offense so commonplace in All-Star Games took center stage in the All-Star Game as Black defeated White, 10-4.
The Bantams wasted no time adding to the drama of the day, three different winners in the three different events of the competition, all with tight finishes, and needing a fourth added to decide the overall winner of the Skills Challenge.
All of 0:01.4 separated the four teams participating in the finals of the Team Relay, the South Middlesex Coyotes winning with a time of 1:06.38. There was not much more of an advantage for the Marlboro Thunder when they took the top spot in the Agility Race, beating out the North Shore Stingrays (1:07.75) and Raynham Raiders (1:08.12) with a time of 1:06.16.
The Natick Chill won the Target Shooting event, but there was a four-way tie for second place, the Norfolk County Hawks going an impressive 8-for-12 in a shoot-off to beat out the Southeastern Grizzlies, South Middlesex Coyotes and Boston Brahmas to grab a much needed two points and get into a first place tie in the overall standings with the Thunder.
An extra bout of the Team Relay was added to decide the winner of the Skills Challenge, where the Hawks foursome of Dan Byers, Mike McSweeney, Tony Luciani and RJ Stansbury beat their then division-best time of 1:06.06 from the preliminary round by more than a second, finishing in a time of 1:05.17 to take the top spot. The Chill finishing the overall standings in third courtesy of the three points they scored winning the Target Shooting event.
In the All-Star Game, the scoring started slowly, more than 15:00 elapsed before either side got on the board as the Stingrays Cameron Bernard and Chris Cataldo of the Hawks were both on point early in net for the Black and White All-Stars, respectively. Once the Grizzlies Ryan Kuzmich scored that first goal at 14:58 to give Black a 1-0 lead, however, the rate of goals increased exponentially as the game went on.
Black’s lead had increased to 3-1 before the end of the half. Kuzmich’s Grizzlies teammates Dylan Tivnan and Josh Dimond combined to get the scoring started early in the second half, as Tivnan was credited with his first of three goals just 0:25 in as he tipped a point shot by Dimond past Coyotes netminder Nick Pazzia.
White was back on the board at 5:20 with a highlight reel goal to make it 4-2, Will Abbott of the Hawks with the spin-o-rama, behind-the-back pass to Ryan DiPalato of the South Shore Sabercats who put the puck past Raynham Raiders goaltender Brett Borges, who had come on to replace Bernard to start the second half.
From there Black went on a run of four unanswered to open up an 8-2 advantage, goals coming from Kuzmich, Tivnan, Ryan Norton of the Thunder and Zack Jordan of the Raiders to start putting the game away.
Each team scored a pair down the stretch, but by then it was too late for any sort of comeback for the White All-Stars. Tivnan and Kuzmich each completed their hat trick to close out the scoring for Black, while Abbott and Emo Schiappa of the Sabercats put away the third and fourth goals for White, finalizing the 10-4 score.
With three goals and a pair of assists, Kuzmich was named the game’s First Star, Donovan McCormack of the Raiders doing good by the home fans with one and one, getting named Second Star. With his goal and All-Star caliber assist, Abbott was tabbed as Third Star of the Game.