What was supposed to be a friendly intra-squad scrimmage of the rookie USF Hockey team turned into a full scale hockey game complete with penalties and fist fights. Player coaches Terry Whinnery and Tom Mehlotf who watched their divided team in action, were surprised at the hussle exhibited for the first scrimmage of the practice season at Legg's Ice Arena Monday night. "You'd have thought they were battling for first place," Whinnery said after the hour and a half battle that saw two penalties, two fist fights and twelve goals. "The main reason for this scrimmage was to see how the line pairings would work out in game situations," Mehloff added. If twelve goals is any indication; it would seem that some offensive punch was shown. "Not necessarily," Whinnery broke in on the anticipated question, "with twelve goals scored you have to assume that either your defense was falling apart or your goalies were getting beat bad." The goalies who traded sides after forty-five minutes, each allowed six goals and seemed to have trouble with shots right along the ice."
"There were penalties that could be avoided too," Mehloff added, "whenever you stick your stick between another guy's legs you're going to trip him and get caught doing it. We have to skate out there and take the puck away from the front instead of from the behind." Two penalties that Whinnery and Mehloff were most upset about were the two handed out to Phil Miller and Dave Kuzirian for fighting. "Kuzirian took a cheap shot at one of the wings coming down his side and would have got a penalty for that, but Miller didn't like Kuzirian's actions so he jumped on Dave's back starting the the brawl and Phil got a penalty of his own (TheFoghorn)."
Miller played one season of soccer for the Dons, and was on the Ice Hockey team.Â
