CANTON, Mass. - The #6 Curry College men's ice hockey team took down #9 University of New England 5-1 Saturday afternoon in the Commonwealth Coast Conference Semifinals at the Canton Ice House.

With the victory, Curry improves to 21-4-1 overall on the season and advances to the CCC Championship game, which will be played at Endicott College next Saturday. The time is to be determined.

The Colonels scored the only goal of the first period on an unassisted end-to-end rush by senior defenseman Nick Favaro (Vaughan, Ontario) 5:49 into the contest. Favaro deked around multiple Nor'easter defenders on his way up the ice before backhanding the puck past UNE's Billy Girard for the 1-0 lead.

Midway through the second period, Curry stretched its lead to two with a 4-on-4 marker from sophomore Eelis Laaksonen (Espoo, Finland). Defensemen Jesse Galassi (Lockport, N.Y.) and Jacob Crespo (Mount Holly, N.J.) assisted on the tally.

Just 55 seconds later, Curry added another tally, this time on the power play. Graduate student Billy Roche (Braintree, Mass.) one-timed a Laaksonen feed past Girard from the left circle to put Curry up by three. Mark Zhukov (St. Petersburg, Russia) earned a secondary helper on the play.

UNE scored its only goal of the contest at the 14:10 mark of the second to send the teams to the second intermission with a score of 3-1 Curry.

The Colonels added an enormous insurance marker at the 11:19 mark of the third on the seventh goal of the season from junior George Vonakis (Abingdon, Md.). Assisting on the play were Arty Koppass (Riga, Latvia) and Austan Bellefeuille (Framingham, Mass.). An empty-netter from Laaksonen with two seconds remaining in regulation sealed the victory for the Colonels.

Between the pipes, Curry senior Reid Cooper (Corman Park, Saskatchewan) stopped 30 of the 31 shots he faced to earn his 19th victory of the season.

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