The combination of one of New Jersey’s more productive offenses going up against a struggling team with a limited roster led to one of the most lopsided results in state ice hockey history on Wednesday night as Central Regional skated to a 21-1 victory over Toms River East at Winding River Rink in Toms River.
The game was called after two periods by the mercy rule.
Central Regional coach Joe Pelliccio defended his team and his actions, saying Central did not deliberately run up the score.
“I emptied our bench in the second period and all of our (JV) kids played in the game and it just kept going the way it was going,” said Pelliccio, whose team came in averaging six goals per game. “You can tell the kids to keep dumping the puck in, but it just kept falling in the crease and the puck was just sitting there in front of the net. It got to the point where there wasn’t much more you could do and it almost would have been an insult not to tap it in.
“It was really rough and it’s absolutely not something that we’re celebrating. I’m not proud to be typing this friggin’ score in by any stretch of the imagination.”
Toms River East came into the game with a 1-14-1 record, including seven 10-goal losses, and only 10 players on its roster. But it found itself at a further disadvantage without the services of its starting goaltender and one of its defensemen. Things got even worse when a scuffle led to a 10-minute misconduct that was called on a Toms River East player, leaving the team with only seven available skaters.
Central Regional opened a 10-0 lead in the first period before outscoring Toms River East, 11-1, in the second.
Toms River East coach Anthony Zipfel was direct about whether or not he felt Central tried to run up the score.
“I’m upset that (Central Regional) decided to do that, but I’m not going to sit here and complain,” he said. “Were they 20 goals better than us? Yeah, today they were, but I just think it’s kind of classless the way the game went.
“I feel bad for the kids. I preach to them all year that we’re here to have fun because we knew it was going to be hard to be competitive because we only have 10 kids. It’s a bad situation to start with and they’ve been getting down on themselves all season, and after this, they just said, ‘Coach, can we just get off the ice? We don’t want to be here.’ I didn’t want to be there either, but at the end of the day it’s almost as if it’s out of your control and it’s not their fault because they can’t control it.”
The result of Wednesday’s contest brings into question whether or not the “mercy rule” should be modified for extreme cases like this.
The New Jersey State Interscholastic Athletic Association operates under the rules of the National Federation of State High School Associations. Rules state that a game is called if a team leads by 10 goals or more at the end of the second period or at any point in the third.
“Maybe there should be a change in the rules, but I don’t know that I can say that because I don’t see this happening too often, if ever again,” Pelliccio said. “Never in my wildest imagination did I see something like this happening tonight; never in a million years.”
Brandon Gould can be reached at bgould@njschoolsports.com. Follow him on Twitter, @BrandonGouldHS. Like NJ.com High School Sports on Facebook.
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