FORT WAYNE, Ind. – The No. 6-ranked Indiana Tech men's ice hockey team kicked off the 2020 portion of their schedule Friday evening with a 6-3 victory over No. 15-ranked Aquinas College in Wolverine-Hoosier Athletic Conference (WHAC) play inside the SportONE/Parkview Icehouse.

"We had a real fast start and that helped carry us through," head coach Frank DiCristofaro said. "We were rusty in some spots in our defensive zone that we'll address and go from there."
 
Joel Holmberg scored three times for this third hat trick of the season while picking up one assist. Francesco Corona, Zach Bennett and Daniel Spannar also scored for Tech while Corona notching three assists to match Holmberg with four points. Bryson Linenburg improved to 10-1 on the season with a season-hig 43 saves.
 
The Warriors wasted little time in getting their offense going to start off the new year as Holmberg scored with 24 seconds off the clock to put the hosts on top while Spannar made it a 2-0 game at the 14:41 mark of the period. Holmberg tallied his second goal of the night 83 seconds later as the hosts took a 3-0 lead into the first intermission.
 
Aquinas cut the deficit to two with 2:19 off the clock in the second period, but the Warriors answered back with three more goals over the next four minutes of play to make it a 6-1 game. Bennett scored with 16:01 on the clock, Corona found the back of the net at 14:40 while Holmberg netted the hat trick at the 13:03 mark. The Saints found some momentum at the end of the period as they scored their final two goals of the night in the last five minutes of the period to cut the lead to 6-3, but were unable to get any shots past Linenburg in the third as Tech improved to 3-0 against Aquinas this season.
 
Tech (16-4-0, 10-1-0 WHAC) concludes their season series with Aquinas on Sunday (pushed back from Saturday's original date due to weather). Puck drop is set for 8 p.m. from Southside Ice Arena in Byron Center, Michigan.