The Kent State Division I hockey team defeated Toledo 9-4 Friday night.

Having a weekend off allowed three players to heal from injuries and return to the lineup including defensemen Shane Handlovitch and Dylan Anderson, and forward Jordan Pitts.

Freshman goaltender Ben White got his first win along with his first career start.

“It feels great to get my first win on my first college start,” White said.”I think the whole team played a really solid game. We did a great job with passing to stay in the offensive zone”. 

Coach Jim Underwood said even though he sees improvement, the team focus needs to stay on playing a full sixty minute game. 

“I felt that we competed for 35 minutes of the 60 tonight,” Underwood said. “We need to learn to finish games off. Tonight we took the entire third period off. We managed to take three penalties that were uncalled for and gave them a chance to score two powerplay goals as a result.”

Underwood said the team needs to continue to focus on its defensive zone as well as its power play and penalty kill because these factors can be deciding factors in tight games.

“It’s great to see seven different goal scores today,” Underwood said. “Everyone contributed at some point.That shows that we have a lot of depth, and it was good to see our top line get going.” 

The team fell to University of Toledo in overtime Saturday night. 

The Flashes lead 3-2 when Toledo tied the game on a powerplay with a minute remaining in the game.

“We were issued a power play with 3 minutes left in the game,” Underwood said. “25 seconds into that power play and we took a penalty to make it  4 on 4. We lost a defensive zone face-off clean didn’t block a shot and the puck went in. We were unable to regroup after that.”

Underwood said that the team was entering the third period trailing 2-1. The team carried most of the play and was able to score early into the third period to get back to the game. 

Flashes goals were scored by defenseman Justion Bioni and forward Jason Smith. Freshman forward Hunter Hillebrecht led the scoring for the Flashes with a goal and two assists. 

Contact Dana O’Black at [email protected]