RICH GRAESSLE CBA goaltender Gary Kondler makes a diving save during the Colts’ Non-Public semifinal loss to St. Peter’s Prep Saturday night at the Continental Arena in East Rutherford. A lack of offensive production finally caught up with the CBA hockey team.
And it couldn’t have come at a more inopportune time.
The Colts, who have had a tough time finding the back of the net all season despite their success, came up short on the offensive end once again in the semifinals of the NJSIAA Non-Public Schools Tournament as they lost to St. Peter’s Prep 2-0 late Saturday night at Continental Airlines Arena.
“We outplayed them and outshot them, but we just didn’t score,” CBA head coach Mike Reynolds said. “That’s been our problem all year.”
Despite all that, the Colts still finished an impressive 16-4-6 and came within one game of reaching the state finals.
In fact, CBA came into Saturday’s game with an eight-game winning streak and unbeaten in its last 12 games.
“We played well all season,” Reynolds, who completed his 15th year at CBA and 30th overall coaching hockey, said. “We won the Gordon Cup with a 1-0 win over Delbarton, the No. 1 team in the state. We hadn’t won that in 10 years.”
The Colts were also hoping to add the fifth state championship in the program’s history to their list of laurels. But with No. 1 CBA and No. 3 St. Peter’s locked in a scoreless battle, Tim Miller finally broke through for the Jersey City school when he took a nice behind-the-back feed from Mike Maffei and fired the puck past CBA goalie Gary Kondler.
Then with Reynolds sending everyone up in hopes of scoring the equalizer in the closing minutes, Michael Dellutri tallied an insurance goal on a breakaway with 1:32 remaining.
“We had to go on the offense, so we sent everybody up,” Reynolds explained. “We hadn’t scored yet so we had to do something different, and we let [Dellutri] get loose. We covered him pretty good all game.”