St. Anthony’s Shuts Out Flyers Hockey, 8-0

History repeated itself last night at the Dix Hills Skating Rink. As it has repeated itself 10 times this season for in the win column. As it did for in the loss. It wasn’t an exact recreation of Monday night’s performance: the Friars took 4 minutes to score their first goal instead of 30 seconds the first go round, a victory of any sort in Frank Bendl’s view.

“They’ve got hockey chemistry,” the Flyers head coach said. “You’ve got to have it to be 9-0.”

That would be 10-0 after another Chaminade took another beating, this time an 8-0 shutout, on Thursday night.

“Brandon (Destasio) played a very good game,” he said, praising his goalie who rattled his stick against the boards a bit harder after the third Friar goal, obviously displeased with himself, even if his coach disagreed.

“They’re going to get goals, you’re not going to stop them, it’s what you keep them to  but you’ve got to break the ice too,” Bendl said. “We made mistakes, we compounded them when we get the puck, you can’t carry against a team like this. You’ve got to put pressure on them.”

But this is what tends to happen against St. Anthony’s.

Talented across their roster, for the 3 years that the Friars have been in the league, they have dominated totally and systematically. Boasting three solid lines, speed, accurate passing, an offense that comes at you in a 5-man unit, defense that doesn’t allow the goalie to be tested much if any during a contest and add momentum on top and you might as well be in a 6-ft. grave looking up at Mount Everest.

Even more telling was that all of the goals came at even strength, three of them on two-on-ones.

“They’re a highly skilled team,” Bendl said. “I thought we slowed them down coming out of the zone. I think we got extremely sloppy in front of our own goal. We had a game plan to slow them out coming out of the middle and we did; they took the puck off the boards.”

While not getting any pucks into the net, the Flyers took at least a measure of satisfaction getting some hits on their arch-rivals, the largest cheer from the Flyer contingent coming when lineman Joe Anile took out forward Brandon Hurley in the second.

“In my mind, we’re still the second-best team in the league; we’ve beat everybody else in the league,” Bendl said, showing confidence that repeat games against the top team would make his players ready for a , whom they had .

“We’ve got to get back on track with some wins.”