New London - Andrew Gagnon has a pretty good memory as he remembers how many games he and his Norwich Free Academy/St. Bernard/Bacon Academy/Stonington/Lyman Memorial hockey teammates won last season.

"Four," Gagnon said with a chuckle.

It's taken the Redhawks less than half the season this year to beat that total. Junior Logan Morin had four goals and an assist to pace his team past the Eastern Connecticut Eagles on Wednesday, 9-1 at Connecticut College.

The Redhawks are 5-4 with 11 games remaining and ranked third in CIAC Division III.

"From day one, we've had a winning philosophy and a lot of that is a testament to our coach (Terry McAuliffe)," Gagnon said. "We came in believing this year that we could really do something special. To get five wins in our first nine and beating last year's record already is really exciting for the team."

Freshman Brayden LoVetere had two goals, sophomore Bryan Guetens had three assists and Gagnon had a goal and two assists. Junior Matt Rakowski and freshman Maren Lancaster also scored.

The Redhawks numbers got a slight boost from adding Stonington and Lyman.

"(The winning is) something about the boys finally responding," McAuliffe said. "They're playing well together and I think it's shown with the product on the ice. They're playing good D and moving the puck well."

The Eagles have also shown improvement this season even though Wednesday's result didn't show it. They've won as many games this season (three) as they'd won in the previous four seasons combined (3-75).

The improvement is more impressive considering that 12 of the Eagles' 17 players are new. The co-op, which had been comprised of Fitch, East Lyme, Ledyard and Hale-Ray, has been bolstered by the additions of Waterford and Wheeler.

"The real differences are confidence and effort," Eagles coach Randy Craig said. "This influx of kids, they work hard and they work hard for 45 minutes every single game. Right now, I can't be more happy with the effort and the results."

Sophomore Larry Nolan scored and sophomore Jimmy Fitzmaurice had the assist for the Eagles (3-4). Senior Tyler Luke added 33 saves.

"If we were down two or three goals in the third period in previous seasons, that was the game," Craig said. "This year, it's not.

"In the game against (defending Division III champion) Newtown (on Dec. 29), we were down 4-1 going into the third period. We tied it up 4-4. Unfortunately, we lost in overtime on a bad turnover. ... The teams in the previous years, they were used to losing. These guys aren't. They're hungry."

LoVetere scored less than a minute into the third period to give the Redhawks a 5-0 lead and Craig opted to substitute his freshmen to get them minutes.

"The first two periods of the game, I thought it was a fairly even event," Craig said. "The difference was when we made a mistake, they made us pay. They made a mistake, we didn't convert."

It was the Redhawks' most lopsided win of the season, but not their best game in Gagnon's opinion.

"I think our strongest game was probably in a losing effort against Sheehan (a 3-2 loss on Dec. 27)," Gagnon said. "They're one of the top teams in our division, and we played really well and lost. After that, we kind of looked at each other and we knew what we needed to do to win..

"I'll take three wins in a row, but we can do a lot better than we did tonight."

n.griffen@theday.com