With the U.S. Naval Academy into its 150th year, the celebration in the land of pleasant living near Chesapeake Bay has to include a big pot of crabs.
Navy's club ice hockey team delivered a 25-gallon black Crab Pot (trophy) yesterday for the anniversary year.
Mike Murnane's first-period hat trick gave Navy an 3-0 lead and third-period goals by freshmen Jamie Waldinger and Eric Sager thwarted a Worcester (Mass.) Polytechnic Institute comeback as the Mids won the 18th Crab Pot Ice Hockey Club Tournament, 7-3, at Dahlgren Hall in Annapolis.
It was the Mids' first Crab Pot trophy since 1991 and their sixth overall since the club tournament started in 1978. Navy lost both games a year ago, and had lost by a goal in each of the two previous Crab Pot finals after edging West Chester College (Pa.), 5-3, in 1991.
More than 1,500 fans, including a large contingent of midshipmen and Washington Capitals Keith Jones and Sylvain Cote, watched the final.
"It was a great event for the academy and for the community and it was free," said seventh-year head coach Jim Barry.
It was all the more thrilling for the team's four seniors -- Murnane, Brian Erickson, Pat Brophy and J. Smith.
"We wanted to get the jump on them because there was a lot of emotion with this being our last game at Dahlgren," said Murnane.
Murnane, who came to Navy from Syracuse, N.Y., as a lacrosse player but "changed to hockey [sophomore year] because I had been playing this game since age 5," started the scoring on a power-play goal with 9:27 left in the first period.
Ryan Brown and Joey Carney set up Murnane for the goal.
Murnane scored his second goal on a breakaway at 6:38.
Erickson, the team's only four-year player, then set up Murnane, who hooked his hat trick with 3:27 left in the first.
Worcester (11-5-1) got on the board 31 seconds into the second period with Brad Forrest and Mike Schultz assisting freshman Brian Robinson.
With WPI a man down, Navy (13-3-2) got the goal back when Ryan Brown fed Joey Carney, who scored with 3:57 left in the second period.
Just over a minute later with a Mid in the penalty box, the Engineers made it 4-2 on a goal by Schultz, assisted by Ken Knowles and Brad Deboer. A couple acrobatic saves by the Mids' sophomore goalie, John Bruzza (22 saves), kept WPI from getting closer.
Navy went into the locker room clinging to a 4-2 lead after two periods, and Barry called on a four-star admiral (Charles Larson), a commandant (William T. R. Bogle) and deputy commandant who is an astronaut (Charles Bolden) to give his team a pep talk.
"After listening to that, the kids came out hungry for that last period and we were quicker and more physical than they were," said Barry.
After the Engineers closed the gap to 4-3 on a goal by Derek Adams over Bruzza's right shoulder in the first 1:30 of the third period, the Mids erupted for three unanswered goals in eight minutes.
A 55-foot dart from the blue line by Waldinger came from behind a screen and WPI goalie Kraig Moodie (39 saves) never saw it. With Murnane and Erickson setting him up, the other freshman, Sager, made it 6-3 Navy with 13:03 left in the game.
Sophomore Charlie Case capped the scoring by circling the cage and coming in the side door on Moodie's left. The Mids outshot WPI, 47-25.
Navy advanced to the final with a 4-0 victory over Lehigh on Saturday. Erickson scored a pair and Ed Sundberg and Brown added one each in that game.
Bruzza had 26 saves to post the shutout and set up the final with WPI, a 3-1 winner over Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Lehigh (10-6-2) won yesterday's consolation, 6-2, over MIT (10-6).