Penalties Cost Hornets in Loss to Greenfield
NORTH ADAMS, Mass. – The Greenfield hockey team Saturday scored three times in the third period to break a 2-2 tie and went on to a 5-3 win over McCann Tech at the Peter W. Foote Vietnam Veterans Memorial Rink.
Jake Jurek scored two goals and assisted on a third as the Green Wave earned its second win of the year over the Hornets and kept McCann Tech winless this winter.
But while its record slipped to 0-7, McCann Tech showed signs that the second half of the season could look different from the first month.
“I think that we have to believe in ourselves that we’re a good team,” Hornets coach Matt Parise said. “And they, being a young team and trying to learn that way of how to win, we still have to figure that part out.
“But I was very impressed. We did a lot of good things tonight. You know, even our penalty kill was pretty darn good. We just were on it for too long, right? Gave them too many chances.
“But I’m really proud of the effort.”
McCann Tech fell into a hole early when Greenfield’s Hunter Smith gave his team a 1-0 lead in the second minute of the game.
It was 2-0 midway through the period when Jurek scored his first goal.
But the Hornets were able to rally. After having trouble breaking out of its zone in the first five or six minutes, McCann Tech was able to start applying pressure toward the end of the first period.
With 1 minute, 48 seconds on the clock, Hayden Bona scored a tough angle shot from the left wing, cashing in on assists from Ethan Wilson and Brennan Vallieres to make it a 2-1 game.
Just more than a minute later, Gabe Lescarbeau scored with a blast from the point to tie the game. Austin Buda and Nick Gilman picked up assists with 35 seconds left in the period, and McCann Tech went to the locker room with the score tied, 2-2.
Greenfield outshot the Hornets, 11-6, in the first period, and that trend continued in the second. But McCann Tech goalie Abby Fuls made seven of her 26 saves in the second to keep the Green Wave off the board and keep the game tied.
Unfortunately for McCann Tech, it drew a five-minute major penalty with three minutes left in the second, but, other than that, Parise liked where his team stood with 15 minutes left to play.
“I felt good coming out of the second period,” he said. “I thought we played two excellent periods of hockey, all the way from top to bottom – from Abby to the defense and the forwards on.
“A lot of hard work went into this game. We played [Greenfield] last week [a 7-2 loss]. So we had a full week of knowing what they did, and we prepared. We had a little scrimmage with Taconic this week, and I think that helped us tremendously to prepare for tonight.
“We just have to stay out of the box.”
The Green Wave used the carryover from that five-minute major to score a power play goal one minute into the third period and take a 3-2 lead. Jack Laurie scored off a rebound to give his team the lead for good.
With 10:19 left to play, Matt Garvin gave his team some insurance, and a minute later, McCann Tech took its second major penalty of the game.
That led to Greenfield’s second power play goal and Jurek’s second marker of the game to make it 5-2 with 4:33 left to play.
In the 42nd minute, Everett Bayliss won a faceoff in the offensive zone, took the puck into the slot and fired a shot on goal. Greenfield’s Cooper Smith (10 saves) made the stop, but Buda cashed in the rebound to cut the margin to two goals.
It was the narrowest margin for McCann Tech this winter since the season-opening 4-3 loss at Taconic and the first time since that night at the Boys and Girls Club that the Hornets have lost by fewer than five goals.
On Wednesday, the Hornets will look to get into the win column when they host Southwick.