HATFIELD—Over the past two seasons Hatboro-Horsham has achieved a certain level of success, including two SHSHL American Division titles. Thursday night the Hatters kept up their winning ways with a 3-1 win at Hatfield Ice over an Abington team that demonstrated it has ambitions of its own.

The result was an entertaining affair that saw both teams working hard over the entire 200 x 85 sheet of ice.

“I saw a complete team effort on both ends of the ice,” Hatboro-Horsham assistant coach Ryan Bell. “It was a close game, and the only reason it stayed close was because we were hustling on offense and defense. I’m very proud of them for taking both sides of the ice seriously.”

All four goals came in a nine-and-a-half minute stretch of the third period.

It took the Hatters (2-0) more than 36 minutes to solve Matt Evangelist, one of the region’s premier goaltenders.

Hatter forward Bill Moffa said he and his teammates did their best to be patient.

“We said on the bench, ‘Keep going, we’re right there,” he said. “It’s going to take dirty goals against this guy and that was pretty much all three of our goals.”

Vince Graziani broke the scoreless deadlock 2:29 into the third period.

Luke Cunningham tied the game for Abington (0-1) when he beat Patrick Murphy in the Hatter net with 8:12 left in regulation but Graziani put the Hatters in front for good just 28 seconds later. He went on to assist Moffa on his team’s third goal, which came with exactly five minutes remaining.

Moffa praised the Hatters’ defensive effort.

“Our game starts across the D-zone,” he said, “all the way to the O-zone. We’re down a couple guys right now until we get them back. We pulled out a huge win tonight and scored some dirty goals.”

Hall said the Hatters do not consider their success in recent seasons a burden.

“A standard has been set,” he said. “We do talk about the championships. We don’t treat {championship} like it’s a bad word, we embrace it. We think we’re a championship team I think in our first two games we proved we still are and that’s the goal.”

Abington coach Ken Borozowski took a lot of positives away from the loss.

“We’ve been kind of preaching all year about return on investment,” he said. “All the hard work that we’ve done the last two years to bring it forward to this season

I just told them that the team that is on the ice tonight it’s not the same team that’s going to be on the ice in January we’re going to get better there are some things that we can do that’s going to make this team that much better.”

Abington 0 0 1—1

Hatboro-Horsham 0 0 3—3

Third-period goals: Vince Graziani (HH) from Robert Munoz, 2:29; Luke Cunngham (A) from Shane Meltzer and Joseph Widmeir, 8:48; Graziani (HH) from Reid Rochestie, 9:16; Bill Moffa (HH) from Graziani, 12:00

Shots: Abington 20, Hatboro-Horsham 45; Saves: Matt Evangelist 42, Patrick Murphy (HH) 19