Garden City Wings
upset Owls 7-2
Since Garden City’s loss in last year’s semi-final playoffs to Lynbrook, Coach Rich Peck wanted the Wings to emerge victorious against the Owls the next time they were matched up. However, for that game at the Bethpage Sakting Rink, the Garden City team was to be short-benched on players. To overcome this, Coach Rich invited Alex Feinstein, one of his goalies, to play out while Matt Lobasso, the resident goalie on the Wings, closely guarded the net.
During the first half of period one, both teams found themselves scoreless. Finally, powerhouse Post (#27) broke Lynbrook’s shutout unassisted, with seven minutes left on the clock, followed by (#97) Junior Matt Borges, unassisted, with 4:48 minutes left. The Owls were unable to respond in kind.
In the second period, Lynbrook managed to break Garden City’s shutout a few seconds off the opening face off. Soon after Joe Giarraputo (#29) retaliated with an assist from senior Josh Oventhal (#91). Joe King stepped up his plays and scored twice with 7:40 minutes, assisted by Borges, and 3:56 minutes left in the period assisted by Oventhal and Borges.
Starting the third period already down 5 goals against, Lynbrook became noticeably aggravated as they made futile attempts to fire more shots at Garden City, but Wings goalie Lobasso kept denying them of goals. Meanwhile teammates Alex Feinstein (#39), Blake O’Neill (#44) and Anthony Mercandetti (#21) kept redirecting the puck back to their opponent’s zone which allowed Shawn Post to score an unassisted goal a few minutes later. Completing his hat trick, King let a final unassisted shot fly at Lynbrook with 8:32 left. The remainder of the game, the Owls were so far behind they lost hope while the Wings just ran down the clock. With only a few seconds left, Lynbrook squeaked out their last goal in garbage time against the Wings, but it was not enough to overcome their loss. In total, both teams had an almost equal numbers of shots on net—Lynbrook with 28 while Garden City had 27.
Flying in the face of the Lynbrook Owls’ almost-perfect record so far in the Nassau County High School Hockey League, the Garden City Wings emerged with a 7-2 upset victory over Lynbrook. As a result, this win moved Garden City’s Varsity team up 2 positions into the 5th place slot in the league, and they expect to continue progressing as they become a formidable challenge to other teams.
For a schedule of the Garden City Wings games and practices, please visit http://www.gcwings.org/
