LANCASTER – Steven Zuziak scored his fourth goal of the night on a breakaway with 2:19 to play to lift Ephrata to a 5-4 win over Annville-Cleona in Friday night’s CPIHL Tier II clash at Lancaster Ice Rink.
The win evened Ephrata’s season mark at 6-6-2 (14 points) in the second flight and kept them solidly in the postseason mix, while denying the Little Dutchmen (9-4-2, 20) a chance to take over sole possession of third place over idle Red Land.
“Tonight, we did a real good job defensively,” Ephrata head coach Kevin Davis said. “We held them to 22 shots, and for that team to be held to 22 shots is pretty incredible.
“We’ve felt all along that we can compete with these guys. We know that we’re capable of doing it. So to beat them tonight was huge for us, especially given how bad they beat us the first time [a 6-2 A-C win on Nov. 7].”
Zuziak (18 goals, 15 assists this season for 33 points) took a blue line-busting pass on the tape in the neutral zone from teammate Chase Weik and buried a forehand deke past Victoria ByDeLay on a breakaway to snap a 4-all tie. Zuziak has been one of the CPIHL’s hottest players since the holiday break, with eight goals in three games since Jan. 2.
“He’s a great little player to watch,” Davis said of Zuziak. “He did really well tonight. If he gets alone down there [offensive zone] he’s good at picking corners and putting the puck on net.”
Weik, Ephrata’s chief playmaker and points leader (16-20-36), assisted on three of Zuziak’s goals, playing the majority of the final stanza in pain after sustaining an arm injury earlier in the period.
The Mounts then barely escaped in the closing minutes at the other end, with A-C buzzing, desperately seeking the tying marker. Goalie Logan Pogwist came up with two big saves at point blank range to stuff the visitors inside a minute to play.
A-C was not sharp with the puck Friday night and played loose in the neutral zone, which cost them a couple of times on head-man breakout passes to the swift Zuziak.
“We were trying to make these long stretch passes,” A-C head coach Nate Brightbill said. “We’ve got to break out closer together, more of a unit. Too much pond hockey, too much do whatever you feel like.”
ByDeLay, one of two female goalies booking significant playing time in the CPIHL (Susquehanna Twp./McDevitt’s Katrina Homovich is the other) relieved a scuffling Cody Keller in net early in the second period and performed admirably for A-C, including a spectacular reflex rejection of a 1-timer in the crease with the game still tied in the third period.
“She really stepped up and made some fine saves,” Brightbill said. “She kept us in it.”
The tenor was set – both in terms of A-C’s loose play and Ephrata’s resulting ability to capitalize – in the first period when Zuziak and later Trevor Seibel each cashed in on direct turnovers at the attacking blue line for a 2-0 Mounts lead in the first nine minutes.
Cody Brightbill got one back for the Dutchmen on a sizzling slap shot that beat Pogwist cleanly to halve it to 2-1 with 4:54 left in the first.
Then a wild sequence ensued, with three goals being scored in the span of 22 seconds. A-C’s Nathan ByDeLay evened it at 2-all with 3:42 to play in the period, but that lasted all of 10 seconds when Zuziak potted his second of the game to give Ephrata a 3-2 edge. A mere 12 seconds after that, Brightbill tied it back up with a deflection off a sharp angle shot by Andrew Jocham.
Zuziak completed the hat trick with the first of his two breakaway tallies early in the middle period, before A-C’s Tanner Fitting tied it at 4 with: 08 left in the second on a 1-timer in crease off a feed from Aaron Struphar.
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