FAIRFIELD, Conn. – Conference points are crucial when you are hanging on to first place and have a couple of games in hand on the next few teams. The Sacred Heart Hockey Team took advantage of that opportunity with goals from five different players and 22 saves from goalie Cullen DeYoung in a 5-2 victory in front of 2,566 at Martire Family Arena.

Scoring the last three goals of the game, all in the final period, moved the Pioneers to 38 points, four more than second-place Bentley, in a month full of home games on the SHU campus.

Trailing 1-0 in the first frame after a power-play tally, junior center Marcus Joughin stole the puck from a Yellowjacket in the circle and skated toward the AIC net. As he approached the near post, Joughin, one of the Pios' top feeders this season with 11 assists, sent the puck past former SHU netminder Chase Clark and inside the far post for his second goal.

SHU, wearing their school crest, gray jerseys, made it two straight with a man advantage in the first half of the middle period. Junior defenseman John Driscoll moved the puck to graduate forward John Jaworski (3 assists) at the top of the circle, where he put a shot toward the net that bounced off Joughin to the side of the crease in the vicinity of graduate center Max Dorrington, who was crashing the cage and hoping for his ninth goal of the year. The hard part was making sure he got a stick on the bouncing puck, the easy thing was finding enough net to hit.

The visitors got the equalizer 18 seconds into the third, just a few ticks on the clock after SHU killed off a penalty that it began serving the previous period. However, the 2-2 score didn't last.

The Pios answered a few minutes later to take a 3-2 lead when junior wing Felix Trudeau banged home a rebound of a Reid Pabich shot. Jaworski fed Pabich heading into the offensive zone and the junior winger threw the biscuit off Clark's pads with SHU's leading scorer hunting for a dirty tally. All goals look snazzy in the box score including Trudeau's team-high 12th.

While the home team was making its third period run, DeYoung was making some big saves. The sophomore from Canton, Michigan, saved the momentum for the Pios with point-blank stops on quality chances with bodily traffic in his eyes.

"It was awesome out there," said DeYoung, who has not seen action since Dec. 7. "The fans were into it, the band showed up and everybody came out to support the guys in the locker room. It was a great experience and a great effort tonight. I enjoyed every minute of it."

Sacred Heart upped the lead to 4-2 with Rylee Hlusiak's first collegiate goal. The sophomore forward passed to Gabe Blanchard, who then passed it off the boards behind the net to Hlusiak cutting to the slot.

"We were just battling for the puck in the corner and it kind of squirted out up top," said Hlusiak. Blanch (Blanchard) got a shot through, and I was able to bury the rebound. It was unbelievable, we felt the energy from the fans all night long, and it was a lot of fun." 

Pabich, who got a perfect feed in the low slot from rookie blueliner Michael Rubin, added his ninth goal of the year to end the scoring 57 seconds later.