By Paul Vozzella
Hometown Weekly Sports Reporter
The boys varsity hockey team suffered a 4-2 loss to Medway last Sunday – the first loss of the season for the defending state champions.
After an even battle through the first 14 minutes, Dover-Sherborn-Weston committed its first penalty of the game with 6:32 left in the first period. Medway was inches away from the lead with a loose puck that rolled off the post while goalie William Goldstein was caught lying on his chest.
Medway was finally successful, slinging the puck past Goldstein to create a 1-0 deficit for the Raiders.
Shortly thereafter, the Raiders found themselves shorthanded again. Medway took advantage and pushed their lead up to 2-0.
“We didn’t come out the way we needed to,” said captain Sam Hinckley. “We didn’t come out playing the game we should be playing… I think it was an effort issue coming out of the gate. We didn’t have our legs under us and that started before the game in warm-ups.”
While this has been an early season theme for the Raiders, this is the first time they found themselves in an early deficit.
“It’s something we talked about coming into this game,” said head coach Alex Marlow. “We can’t afford to let the other team have x-amount of time we’re taking to get warmed-up and get going… It’s been a characteristic of us lately.”
Senior Rob Morsilli almost netted one for the Raiders but the shot dinged off the goal post in the final minute of the first period.
The same story repeated itself in the second period as Dover-Sherborn-Weston relinquished another shorthanded goal to Medway. Later on in the period, the Raiders saw a great opportunity go to waste as they missed a shot with half the net exposed during a power play.
Medway started the third period keeping momentum up, scoring their fourth goal with 12:55 on the clock.
With the game seemingly out of reach, the Raiders did not back down. Defenseman Caleb Curran and Hinckley both scored for the Raiders to close out the loss.However, losing is not something the Raiders are accustomed to.
“[There are] kids in the locker room that [haven’t known] losing since last January,” said Marlow. “I think it’s a growing point… Take it, remember it, recycle it and we’ll get back to it next week.”
In the face of defeat, Marlow and Hinckley pointed towards how they can take their performance and improve on it in the future.
“We’re not gonna start every game 1-0, 2-0,” said Marlow. “We need to find a way to crawl back and we did. It was a little too late… but we’ll take that portion of it and we’ll figure out what we need to work on.”
“I’m glad the way we fought back in the third period,” said Hinckley. “I thought we showed some resilience… All we can do from here is build on it in practice… It starts from the bottom and builds back up.”
The post Boys’ hockey battle Mustangs appeared first on Hometown Weekly.