The City 6 Tournament was put on hold this season because of Pope Francis’s visit to Philadelphia Sept. 26-27.
The tournament was held last season at the Class of 1923 Arena at the University of Pennsylvania and featured Temple, Villanova, La Salle, Drexel, St. Josephs and Penn.
“I feel like that is out of our hands,” junior defenseman Aron Litostanski said. “I would like to play in this tournament, especially with a bunch of these teams. Last year we played Drexel and Villanova and we were doing good and it would be a good early season test to see where we stand.”
Instead of playing in the tournament, the Owls will host Drexel Sept. 25 at 8 p.m. and Villanova Sept. 27 at Hatfield Ice Arena in Colmar, Pennsylvania.
“No offense to the teams that dropped out, but they weren’t the stronger teams,” junior forward Matt Krulikowski said. “The best teams will still be playing. It will be kind of much of the same. We are still getting two strong games on the weekend, so can’t really ask for much more than that.”
Last season at the City 6 Tournament, Temple defeated La Salle 8-0 and Villanova 4-3 in overtime.The Owls were defeated in the championship game by Drexel, 2-1.
Temple was awarded a bye in this year’s contest, but that advantage will have to wait until next year.
“It was just one of those games, but the rest of the weekend was real good,” Krulikowski said. “We took a lot from it. We came together as a team. It wasn’t about ourselves. We’re hoping to do the same thing this weekend. [We want to get] a good jump-start to the season and keep rolling from there. We have Pittsburg the weekend after, so we really have to put it together this weekend and be ready to go for Pittsburg. “
Shutout in preseason
The Owls faced off with Delaware Sept. 18 in their lone preseason game and were shutout 4-0 at Fred Rust Arena.
The Blue Hens tallied two goals in the first period and added two more in the second period. Delaware outshot the Owls for the game 50-25.
“I thought we had a couple good chances to put some pucks in the back of the net, so we are making some adjustments with line combinations, kind of seeing who is going to play good with each other,” head coach Roman Bussetti said. “We made some good adjustments during the game and we got some more ideas from this week at practice going into Friday.”
