The Long Island Gulls continued their impressive run at the Chipotle-USA Hockey Youth Tier I 16U National Championships with a 5-1 win over the Jr. Bulldogs. With the win, Long Island remained undefeated and will matchup against the undefeated Rochester Saints for the title bout on Monday.

“It was unbelievable,” said head coach Dan Cassno. “We’ve been talking about it all year about having our full roster of players, the full depth of our team contribute. And you see guys contribute in the ways that they did, every single guy contributing in the lineup, you can’t win it with just one guy.”

Long Island began the scoring close to halfway into the first period. Thomas Zocco connected on the power play to give the Gulls the lead.

“Rich Rucireto, our best faceoff guy, got a clean win back to Alex Bosland. We ran our play and I had a full lane. So, I just walked in and shot it and it went in,” said Zocco.

A few minutes later, the Gulls added to their lead when Griffin Erdman fired a shot from the right circle to make it 2-0.

The score remained 2-0 through the second period, but the Gulls were able to expand that lead to 4-0. The Bulldogs scored a goal late in the third, but after that, the Gulls limited the opposition’s chances.

“My message was just to stick with what we do well and stick to the game plan,” said Cassano. “We start with our d-zone. Defense leads to offense, speed coming back is going to lead to offense going the other way. We felt like if we did our job we could do well.”

Now the job continues as the battle of two unbeatens will meet up on Monday in the National Championship.

“This is like my second family here,” said Zocco. “We’ve been through so much so to be able to finish the job tomorrow would be the best.”