Ice hockey team drops weekend games against Illinois

The IU club ice hockey team suffered what turned into a controversial, heated loss against No. 12 Illinois on Friday, scoring the first goal and then giving up three unanswered goals to end the game.

IU entered the game having split a two-game set with Illinois two weekends ago, winning the latter in a 3-2 shutout. But Friday, IU couldn’t quite compete with Illinois’ late offensive surge.

The Hoosiers were first on the scoreboard when sophomore Nick Dobrez scored in the fourth minute of the second period. And for a while, the Hoosiers seemed to have control of the game, with senior goalie Daniel Abramson blocking all the shots Illinois slapped his way.

But five minutes later, Abramson finally let a goal scored by Illinois’ Mike Ursitti through, and the Hoosiers seemed to lose momentum.

“I think we were better prepared, having already seen them before this season,” IU coach Jan Jas said. “But I’m really more concerned about us rather than them, and once we gave up one goal, we never recovered.”

The Illini started the third period off quickly with a go-ahead goal by Sam Fatigato, and the controversy then began to unfold.  

The already hard-hitting game with the occasional high stick or tripping penalty became even more heated when an IU player landed on top of Illini goalie Angelo Sakellaropoulos while the Hoosiers had the puck. Before they could get a goal, officials blew the whistle to stop play while the medical staff attended to the goalie.

He was brought off the ice and later diagnosed with a blown-out knee, Illinois coach Chad Cassel said.  

But a new goalie came on for the Illini, and they quickly struck back. And hard.  

Only minutes later an Illinois player fell on top of Abramson while the Illini had the puck, preventing the Hoosiers from properly protecting the goal. The puck got through, a shot by Fatigato, which was his second goal of the night. But the play didn’t stop there.

Abramson, in an attempt to get up, tried to shove the Illinois player off of him, sparking an altercation. Those two and an additional IU player were shoving and throwing the occasional punch inside the net, which was up against the boards. The referees finally separated the three, and after minutes of deliberation and frequent shouting between the teams, the situation was settled, and the goal counted.

“I don’t know about the rule,” Jas said. “The refs can’t do anything about it. Our goalie was just laying with a player that ended up on top of him.”

And even though his players’ actions were in defense of their goalie and team, Jas said he didn’t see the actions that followed the Illini’s goal as warranted.

“It’s definitely not positive, and it really only becomes a distraction for our team,” Jas said. “The only time I see where fighting could be necessary is if our goalie is really getting abused out there, but Illinois was just playing good, hard hockey.”

And though it seemed that the Illini might have won easily, despite an early goal by IU, Jas still felt they had a good chance to knock off their ranked opponent the following day when the two played in Indianapolis.

“We’ve got to come out and play 60 minutes of good, hard hockey,” Jas said. “We need to play till the last second of the game.”

But the Hoosiers failed to grab a win in the series, losing 5-4 on Saturday, moving the team’s record to 4-9.  

They play again Friday and Saturday at 7 p.m., both at North Dakota State.