HAMILTON – The Colgate men's ice hockey team's offense exploded for five goals Saturday afternoon as the Raiders downed the Niagara Purple Eagles, 5-1, at class of 1965 Arena.
 
Jared Cockrell (Readfield, Maine) scored two goals in the first NCAA Men's Ice Hockey game of the season while fellow sophomore Bobby McMann (Wainwright, Alberta) and first-year's Paul McAvoy (Richmond, Kentucky) and Tyler Jeanson (Carman, Manitoba) also added goals in the win.
 
The Raiders' five goals are it's most in a game since scoring five goals in their first win of the season last year against Maine on Oct. 29.
 
After battling back and forth for the first seven minutes of the first period, Jeanson poured him his first career goal and first goal of the men's college hockey season. Jeanson collected a long pass up the left boards from Sebastian Weberg (Oslo, Norway) and skated into the left circle before shooting low, glove side to beat Niagara goaltender Brian Wilson on the first shot of his collegiate career.
 
Colgate held on to its 1-0 lead until 6:47 into the first period when Niagara scored its lone goal of the game on a five-on-three power play to tie up the game. Derian Plouffe collected a pass from Noah Delmas at the point and put home the goal with a one-timer.
 
Despite the goal for Niagara, Colgate never looked back as the Raiders scored four unanswered goals over the final 30 minutes for its first win of the season. McMann reclaimed the Raiders lead for good after John Snodgrass (Eagan, Minnesota) hit him with a pass in the slot. McMann stopped the puck with his skate before shooting low, glove side to beat Wilson.
 
Cockrell put home his first of the game to make it 3-1 less than two minutes later. Josh McKechney (Calgary, Alberta) played the puck up to McMann where McMann fired a shot from the left circle. The puck deflected off Wilson's glove and Cockrell charged the crease to put home the puck before he was hit from behind.
 
McAvoy scored arguably the best goal of the game nearly midway through the third period. He collected a long pass from Ben Sharf (Williamsville, New York) across the neutral zone. McAvoy managed to get around the defender before bring the puck from his forehand to his backhand to chip it over Wilson's glove.
 
Cockrell added an empty net goal with just less than 57 seconds left in the third period to close out the Raiders scoring and put an exclamation point on the victory.
 
BOTTOM LINE
Colgate 5, Niagara 1
 
WIN/LOSS RECORDS
The Raiders won the first game across all of NCAA Men's Ice Hockey to improve to 1-0-0 while the Purple Eagles fall to 0-1-0.
 
KEY RAIDER INFO
-Cockrell scored two goals in a game for the first time in his career and tallied his third career two-point game
-McMann also recorded a pair of points on a goal and an assist for his fifth multiple-point game of his career
-Willie Brooks (Locust, New Jersey) had a pair of assists for his first career two-assist and two-point game after assisting the first two Colgate goals of the game.
-McAvoy and Jeanson became the first pair of Colgate rookies to score in a season-opener since Darcy Murphy '16, Tylor Spink '16 and Kyle Baun all scored in Colgate's 10-2 win over Niagara in 2012
-Colton Point (North Bay, Ontario) picked up right where he left off last season with 31 saves on 32 shots, recording 30 or more saves in a game for the fifth time in his career
-Trevor Cosgrove (Exeter, New Hampshire) and Sharf picked up their first career assists on McAvoy's first career goal.
-McKechney also recorded his first career point with an assist in the win
-Snodgrass and Weberg each added assists in the win for the Raiders.
 
FACTS AND FIGURES
-Colgate held the edge in shots on goal, 33-32, thanks to a 13-9 first period
-Niagara went 1 for 5 on the power play while the Colgate went 0 for 6.
-The Raiders held a 39-35 advantage in faceoffs led by Evan Peterson's 11 faceoff wins.
 
FROM THE SOURCE
Head Coach Don Vaughan
"It's a good feeling, it's nice to get off to a start like that. For our young team, it's good in terms of confidence and gives them a bit of a jolt. We got some contributions from some freshmen tonight, which was fun to see.
 
"We've seen some chemistry early, probably earlier than we have on some other teams in the past. That stands out to me more than anything. For an early season game like this, guys were really finding each other and sometimes that takes four or five games."
 
"[Colton] sure was [an anchor], I've said this before but he makes the difficult save look easy so sometimes you sort of underestimate how well he did play. When we go back and look at the film, we're going to see that he made some really big saves at key moments that he made look easy."
 
UP NEXT
The Raiders return to action next week when the Merrimack Warriors come to Hamilton for the first time since the 2011-12 season for two games on Friday and Saturday at 7:30 p.m.