Frisch completes comeback, hands Glen Rock its first loss

The opening five minutes of this game told one story, and that was that it looked like Frisch was going to suffer its fourth loss of its last five games.

Having given up two quick goals and with a banged up and depleted roster with just three defensemen, it only felt as though Frisch’s problems were going to continue to swirl and grow with each passing minute.

It’s a good thing games don’t end after just five minutes though, because for the remaining 40 minutes of gameplay, Frisch looked like a completely different team than it had played like over the past week and a half.

The second and third periods belonged to Frisch (6-3), which completed a two-goal comeback to defeat Kelly division rival Glen Rock (4-1-1) 3-2 at the Ice House, in Hackensack.

Alex Pomerantz scored twice in the span of two minutes late in the second period to tie the score at 2-2, and then Noah Sosland gave the Cougars the lead with under 10 minutes to go in the third period and poking in a puck that had just pinged off the crossbar.

The defense, which was made up of just Brody Latkin, Elijah Zackai, Max Levy, and goaltender Jared Helwani, locked down the Panthers in an impressive fashion behind a simplified gameplan.

“I think we finished off the first period in an ok spot,” Frisch coach Ralph Abecassis said “It’s only two goals. I had a feeling that the next goal we scored would push us over the edge because we felt that we were putting a lot of pressure on.”

Even though it trailed by two goals early after Mason Parisi and Brennan Visokey scored at 14:06 and 12:20 of the first period, Frisch was able to settle in after the opening few minutes and really aimed to get pucks deep and create scoring chances by driving hard towards the net.

Throughout the first period the Glen Rock defense did a good job of cutting down on those shooting and passing lanes and cleared away loose pucks near the crease, but as Frisch kept driving and driving, it was only a matter of time before more chances came.

As the offense got more comfortable, so did the defense. Both of Parisi and Visokey’s goals came from the high slot off the rush, and those ended up being two of a small amount of scoring chances from the slot that Glen Rock had all game.

One of the biggest reasons behind the defensive success in this game was that that unit didn’t try to do too much, and the forward group did a good job of staying back and helping out on that end of the ice as well. That was a concern of Abecassis’…