The season-opening Craig Charron tournament was held at RIT’s Ritter Arena Thanksgiving weekend with the first of four games pitting the team Charron last coached – Spencerport – against Webster-Thomas.
The Rangers dropped a 7-1 decision in a game that was competitive for the first two periods.
The Titans opened the scoring just 40 seconds in converting a bad defensive zone turnover for the only scoring of the first period.
They scored twice within 3:17 in the second to make it 3-0 before the Rangers ended the shutout bid in the final minute of the stanza on the power play.
Brandon Corey, who led the Rangers last season with 35 points, won the offensive zone face-off back to the right point. Evan Conolly skated down the boards and behind the Thomas net before feeding the puck in front to assistant captain Max Moran for the goal.
The Titans scored four times in the final period to put the game out of reach.
Spencerport embarks on the 2014-15 season minus two of their top five scorers and starting goaltender from last season’s 13-7 team. They also played in this first game without forward Nick Charron, who was out with an injury. Charron led last year’s squad with 24 assists and tied with Corey for the team lead in points.
“We lost some guys and that’s always an adjustment for any team at the high school level,” head coach Jason Rich said. “We will miss (the seniors we lost) and they were absolutely big players for us and they were big guys in the room and it has been difficult to fill their shoes.
“We need to continue to build our way up to February, which is our goal, and understand where we made mistakes and get better at them.
“We don’t have a huge roster with 16 skaters, but we’re a tight knit group.”
The Rangers play in Division II in the restructured Monroe County League along with Brockport, Irondequoit, Churchville-Chili, Hilton, Aquinas, Gates Chili and the Greece Thunder.
