by Mark Stillson
This past weekend the Bishop Hendricken Varsity Hockey team faced two tough divisional opponents, Friday night against La Salle Academy and on Saturday against Mount St. Charles. The Hawks split the weekend set, beating the Rams but losing to the Mounties.
Friday night’s game against La Salle was by far one of the best games of the season. Both Hendricken and La Salle came out of the gate strong, but with both teams staging such an epic physical and defensive battle, there was no scoring in the first period. The second period was highlighted by a power play goal off the stick of Eddie Markowski (from Matthew Creamer). LaSalle overcame that setback, however, and tied the score with a goal by Giblin minutes into the third period.
As the defensive battle continued to drag on some seven minutes into the final frame, Dakota Hersey and Andrew Fera scored 44 seconds apart and quickly turned it into a 3-1 game. After pulling their goalie late in the game, LaSalle managed one more goal with five ticks left on the clock. The Hawks won 3-2, and senior goaltender Mitch Proulx saved 20 of 22 shots on goal.
Mount St. Charles arrived at Thayer on Saturday night (the first two periods of which were broadcast live here at The Network and can still be seen in the previous post), and both teams played an extremely physical game, with players on both sides availing themselves of every opportunity to deliver crunching hits. Playing such intense back-to-back weekend games seemed to take a toll on the Hawks, however, as they never seemed to get their legs underneath them. The Hawks made more than a few uncharacteristic mistakes, and the Mounties departed Thayer with a 3-1 win (the third goal an empty-netter, as the Hawks had pulled the goalie).
Despite the Hawks’ absorbing their first league loss, there where positives. Goalie Mitch Proulx was outstanding between the pipes, the defense was good, and the changes to the lines made during the intermission worked for a while. Tucker Alberigo scored the lone goal for the Hawks, as Lawrence (Mount’s goalie) stood on his head the entire game, turning away all of our scoring chances.
This weekend the Hawks once again face Mount, on Friday night but this time at Mount at 9 pm. On Saturday, the boys face Xavier High School of Mass at Thayer Arena at 6:00 pm. As of right now, the Xavier game will be broadcast live, right here at The Network.
One further broadcasting note: the Hendricken-LaSalle basketball game from this past Monday night, originally scheduled to be broadcast live but postponed due to inclement weather, will be played this coming Monday night at Pepin Gym. Once again, the game is slated to be broadcast here at The Network, barring any unforeseen difficulties.
