Icemen salvage nonleague split, stomp L-S

The Canton High boys ice hockey team faced two familiar nonleague opponents from the north last week and came away with a 1-1 split, falling to Newburyport 4-2 on Monday before crushing Lincoln-Sudbury 6-2 on the road on Wednesday.

Junior Seamus Pecararo (Mike Barucci photo)

With the win and the loss, the Bulldogs moved to 7-4 overall with eight games left to play in the regular season. The team is currently tops in the Davenport Division with a 4-1 league mark, but the schedule only gets tougher from here on out with key battles looming against Franklin, Oliver Ames, and Milford.

Fortunately for Bulldog fans, this year’s group has already proven that it can hang with upper echelon opponents — a fact that was apparent in both contests last week despite their disappointing finish against Newburyport on MLK Day.

Annual rivals since they met in back-to-back state championship games in 2009 and 2010, the Bulldogs and Clippers played this year’s installment at Metroplis Rink, and the hosts jumped out to an early 2-0 lead behind a pair of first-period goals by junior Jimmy Jenkins.

Despite the early onslaught, however, Newburyport managed to regroup and went on to score the final four goals of the contest, including two power play strikes late in the first and the go-ahead goal with 30 seconds left in the second period.

After the game, head coach Brian Shuman lamented the missed opportunities and occasional lapses in a game that the Bulldogs dominated for long stretches.

“It was frustrating for our guys to play well and not be able to score [over the final two periods],” he said. “Overall we played a good game. We just had these key moments, particularly at the end of the first and end of the second, where we kind of let our guard down a little bit.”

Shuman said he reminded the players about the importance of finishing periods strong after the game, and they responded two days later with arguably their finest performance of the season against a tough Lincoln-Sudbury team.

The win was Canton’s first on the Warriors’ home ice since the two squads began playing each other back in 2008, and it was as convincing as the score would suggest, highlighted by balanced scoring from the top three forward lines and clutch goaltending by junior Justin Slocum.

Slocum was especially impressive early in the first period and throughout much of the third, and in between his teammates got it done on the other end of the ice, led by junior captain John Femia, who raised his team-leading point total to 24 with a pair of highlight-reel goals in the second period.

Jenkins also found the net for the Bulldogs — his fourth goal in the last three games — and senior Cian O’Mahony tallied the first goal of his career. Seamus Pecararo and Brian Hagan also had goals for the visitors, while Tommy Kilduff, Shaun Kirby, and Matt Lazaro each registered assists.

The Bulldogs have now racked up 57 goals as a team through 11 games and will look to add to that total when they host Franklin (8-1-3) on Saturday at 6 p.m. The team will then prepare for a brutal stretch next week with four games in five days, including back-to-back makeup games on Saturday and Sunday against second-place Oliver Ames and third-place Milford.

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Posted by Jay Turner on Jan 30 2015. Filed under High School, Sports. Both comments and pings are currently closed.