Mercuri scores twice as Crunch roll past Comets 5-1

Lucas Mercuri turned Syracuse’s best kind of late-season night into his own showcase. After Utica struck first, the Crunch answered with two goals in less than two minutes and never gave the game back, turning a shaky opening into a 5-1 win that looked more like a playoff-ready response than a routine Saturday result.

Xavier Parent put Utica ahead at 4:53 of the first period, but Syracuse snapped right back. Nick Abruzzese tied it at 15:05, and Mercuri pushed the Crunch in front at 17:19, a quick reversal that changed the tone of the game before the first intermission. From there, Syracuse kept building instead of chasing, and that mattered. In a stretch where every point starts to carry more weight, the Crunch did not just recover from the early goal. They controlled the game.

Mercuri finished with two goals and was the clearest offensive difference-maker on the ice. Abruzzese, Noah Steen and Gabriel Szturc also scored for Syracuse, giving the Crunch production from multiple spots in the lineup rather than a single hot line carrying the load. Mitchell Chaffee, Spencer Kersten, Jakob Pelletier, Reece Newkirk, Dylan Duke, Matthew Peca and Matteo Pietroniro all picked up assists, a spread of scoring that said as much about Syracuse’s depth as the final score did.

The second period was where the game really tilted. Syracuse added two more goals after taking the lead, widening the gap and forcing Utica to play from behind without ever finding a sustained answer. Szturc closed it out in the third, sealing a result that matched the shot count, 34-28 for Syracuse. The Crunch were not just finishing chances; they were getting to the areas that mattered more often and with better efficiency.

Special teams made the separation even clearer. Syracuse went 2-for-6 on the power play and held Utica scoreless on four chances, a clean edge in a game where the Comets needed a clean breakthrough after Parent’s opener and never got one. That kind of response, after conceding first, is the sort of detail that matters when the schedule tightens and the postseason picture starts to sharpen. Syracuse looked like a team settling into form, while Utica left another game without the kind of push that can stabilize a stretch run.