Zacher’s historic start leads Griffs to fifth win

By Kaitlyn Belile, Assistant Features Editor

The Canisius hockey team split their series at Colgate, thanks to forward Walter Zacher’s dominant four-point weekend.

The Griffs earned a 4–2 victory on Friday night, following three straight third-period goals in a span of 6:24. Junior Rhys Chiddenton’s goal from below the goal line tied the game 2–2, with freshman Carter Anderson finding the back of the net off a rebound three minutes later to take the lead. Senior Oliver Tarr finished the game with an empty net goal to seal the win.

Following Zacher’s goal and assist on Friday night, and two goals in Saturday’s 5–3 loss, he produced just the fourth season in AHA history with six or more goals in a player’s first seven games. This is Zacher’s second time matching the record initially owned by Robert Morris alum Cody Wydo, who also achieved the feat twice in his career. 

In recognition of the weekend Zacher had, he was named the AHA Forward of the Week. Zacher is honored to receive the award, but recognizes that finding success is a team effort, as “playing with two great players, Portsy [Grant Porter] and Chidds [Rhys Chiddenton] have helped…They’re having success as well, so I think we’re just working really well as a trio and looking forward to keeping that going.” 

In Saturday’s loss, Zacher opened the scoring five minutes into the contest. The Raiders responded in the second period with a goal from Tyson Doucette. The Griffs got their lead back with a goal from Grant Porter on the power play. Nearing the end of the second period, the Raiders tied the game back up with a goal from Jack Brandt at 19:17. 42 seconds later, with just half of a second remaining, Zacher scored his sixth goal of the season to retake the lead. In the third period, Colgate’s Jake Schneider, Jack Brandt and Max Nagel scored with no response from the Griffs to secure their win. 

Zacher believes the answer to the team’s struggle to maintain momentum involves getting back to the basics of Head Coach Trevor Large’s team environment: “I think just remembering what our identity is and being able to get back to that…You can tell in our games we might drift away from it a little bit. So, I think the most important thing is just getting back to that.” 

The Griffs are back in action in Waltham, MA. at Bentley University this weekend where they return to conference play against the Falcons.

Photo courtesy of Mikayla Boyd