The Hamilton College Continentals opened up their season with a 5-1 NESCAC victory over the Amherst College Mammoths on Friday night inside Hamilton’s Russell Sage Rink.
Both teams were playing their first game since March 2020 after the pandemic canceled the 2020-21 season.
Hamilton out-shot Amherst 29-25. Sean Storr ’22 stood strong between the pipes and turned away 24 shots for the Continentals and the Mammoths’ Dan Dachille made 24 saves as well.
Amherst scored first at 14:23 in the first period on the power play from right in front of the net.
Chad Varney ’22 tied the score with a power-play goal at 19:23 in the first period. Nick Hawkins ’23 passed the puck back to Varney who shot it over to Carter Dwyer ’23 and he quickly passed it back to Varney for a shot through the five-hole.
Grisha Gotovets ’25 scored his first collegiate goal and the go-ahead goal on the power play at 18:14 in the second period. Jordi Jefferson ’22 fed Gotovets the puck from the top of the right faceoff circle and he put it in from his knees.
Nick Rutigliano ’22 made it 3-1 with just tenths of a second remaining in the second period. Fred Allaire ’22 won the faceoff with three seconds left and fed the puck to Jeremy Smith ’24 who passed it back to Rutigliano for a shot that went top shelf past Dachille’s blocker.
Matt Gellerman ’24 recorded his first collegiate goal at 3:40 in the third period and made it 4-1 for the Continentals. William Neault ’25 dumped the puck into the Amherst end and Hawkins picked it up behind the net. Hawkins fed the puck to Gellerman who put it into the bottom-left corner of the net. Jefferson tipped in his own rebound at 12:32 and closed out the scoring.
Hamilton is back home on Saturday, Nov. 20 to play Albertus Magnus College in a non-conference game at 3 p.m.
