Vitale's Hat Trick Helps Hillsborough Tie Ridge

The Ridge and ice hockey team nearly duplicated their game from a month ago—a 2-2 tie—as the teams skated to a 3-3 stalemate Thursday night at the Bridgewater Sports Arena.

The teams could see each other again in the Skylands Cup and perhaps in the state tournament as well.

Ridge jumped out to a 1-0 lead on Thursday when Keith Knapp scored with an assist by Tom Carpenter with 7:54 left in the first period.

In the second period, Hillsborough's Alex Vitale scored his first goal of the game with an assist from Nick Bierwirth with four minutes left.

In the third period, Ridge scored first off a shot by Chris Mastroianni assisted by Knapp with 12 minutes remaining.  A minute later, Vitale scored his second goal of the night for Hillsborough, assisted by Chris Digerolamo. 

Next to make his mark was Tom Carpenter of Ridge, with an assist from Ryan Klingert with 8:57 left.

But Vitale completed the hat trick when he scored off a feed from Reid Siegrist to knot the score with 4:34 left in the period.

Hillsborough held a 30-19 shot advantage in the game.

Hillsborough faces Madison Saturday night at ProTech Hockey Ponds in Somerset at 7:30 p.m.