After the No. 3 Penn State ACHA Division I Icers captured the inaugural ESCHL tournament title, there was only one thought on their minds.
"I brought the trophy into the locker room and sat it down," Penn State coach Scott Balboni said. "The guys told me to take it out, because they have bigger goals on their mind."
The Icers avenged their two losses last weekend and defeated No. 4 Delaware, 8-3. in the ESCHL championship game yesterday afternoon at McMullen Hockey Arena.
Penn State beat Navy in the semifinals, 3-2, despite a lackluster performance that had some players concerned.
Fourteen seconds into yesterday's game, that concern left, as freshman Taylor Cera scored to give the Icers an early 1-0 advantage.
"It was really great to get out early after getting embarrassed last weekend against Delaware," senior defenseman Keith Jordan said. "We came out hard with a lot of intensity and scored some good goals."
The Icers led 3-1 after the first period and never looked back. Forward Jaime Zimmel scored twice in the third period -- including 10 seconds in, giving the Icers a three-goal advantage -- to seal the victory.
Throughout the weekend, the Icers leaned on their special teams to bring home the championship.
"Special teams is always important obviously, and our penalty kill was the best it has been all year," Zimmel said. "Our power play right now is as great as I've ever seen."
Balboni said the victory meant even more because the Icers beat Delaware, the only ESCHL team to beat them this season.
"Someone asked me Friday who I'd rather play if we got to the finals," he said. "I didn't hesitate in saying 'Delaware. Absolutely.' It gave us the self-motivation and hunger that we needed to play our best game of the season."
The tournament marked the first title for Balboni, and the team gave him the game puck for his efforts.
Icers' senior Mike McMullen won the tournament MVP award, and Nick Signet, Luke DeLorenzo, Tim O'Brien and Jordan were named first-team All-Conference.
Before the season, Penn State set three goals for themselves: win the regular season title, win the tournament title and win the national championship. Two down, one to go.
"We're really happy to win the tournament title, because it was a big goal of ours," Jordan said. "But we're focused on nationals in a couple weeks. We know we have to work 60 minutes every game in order to reach our ultimate goal."
