Although they may have come into Saturday’s title game as the lower seed, nobody on the ETBE roster considered the team to be an underdog. On March 13, the No. 2-seeded Eagles downed previously undefeated Mamaroneck for the Southern Westchester hockey title, turning in a dominant performance to beat the Tigers 4-1 at Hommocks Park Ice Rink.
Although the Tigers were able to strike first on Saturday when Max Nodiff beat ETBE goalie JP Rosabella with a top-shelf wrister in the first period, it would be the last time that Mamaroneck would be in control of the game. The Eagles knotted the score early in the second period when Kyle Dillon scored from the slot and would add two more tallies—on goals from Will Stupart and Luke Arrighi—to take a 3-1 lead heading into the final 17 minutes of play.
Dillon would later put the game away with an empty netter.
“We’re a resilient team, and whenever you give up a goal you have to power back,” Rosabella said. “When you’re down a goal, some teams tend to get away from their systems, but we just kept playing with the belief that the puck was going to go in the net eventually.”
Rosabella faced just 21 shots on the night, a far cry from one year ago when his 37-save shutout against Mamaroneck in the semifinal round helped ETBE advance to the Section I title game. Rosabella credited the Eagles’ forecheck and inspired defensive zone play with limiting the Tigers’ offensive zone chances on Saturday.
“My guys played absolutely insane in front of me,” he said. “Making 20 saves is a lot easier than whatever it was last year.”
ETBE head coach Steve Forzaglia was especially impressed with the way his team bounced back from a 3-2 loss to this same Tigers team back on March 5.
“We were a bit shorthanded in that one, but we had a full team tonight,” Forzaglia said. “Our guys had confidence in our system, we played our system and that really made the difference.”
With the loss, Mamaroneck finished the season with a 10- 1-1 record, while the Eagles ended up with a 12-2 mark. But for seniors like Rosabella, who have now played their final varsity contest, closing out the season with a championship win over a perennial powerhouse like Mamaroneck won’t soon be forgotten. “It’s everything to me,” he said. “It’s senior year, and there’s no better way to go out than on top.”
