AUBURN – Fans crowded into every available inch at Ingersoll Arena on Wednesday, drawn by what appeared to be a clash of two top Class A high school hockey teams. What they saw, however, was an offensive and defensive clinic put on by the defending state champions.

Kyle Smith scored three goals and had two assists and Colby Gilbert added two goals and two assists to lead Edward Little to a 6-0 win over St. Dom’s.

The Red Eddies (11-1) stymied the Saints’ (8-3) offensive attack all night, limiting St. Dom’s to 18 shots, including just three in the final period. The offense, meanwhile, got a big boost from the power play unit, which scored four goals on five chances.

“This was a big win,” EL coach Jamie Belleau said. “Our whole philosophy is that good defense is ultimately going to create offensive opportunity, and we played great defensively tonight.”

“They have good speed,” EL defenseman Bill Parker added. “We have size over them. We knew they would try and play dump-and-chase on us, so our whole goal was to turn quickly and get the puck up to our wings to get it out of the zone.”

After the first period, the game was taking shape as many expected. The only goal of the first came when Smith took an errant Colby Gilbert shot and stuffed it into an open net as St. Dom’s goaltender Brandon Gervais dove the wrong way.

“The shot came off the back boards and right to the middle of the hash marks,” Smith said. “I had the whole net there, it kind of surprised me, actually.”

In the second, St. Dom’s came out with a full head of steam, getting eight shots on goal in the first three minutes of the period, only to have EL netminder Kris Bennett turn them all aside. From there, EL again began to apply pressure, forcing the Saints to take costly penalties and capitalizing on those chances.

“The big difference was their power play all night,” St. Dom’s coach Bob Boucher said. “They had their chances and they capitalized on them.”

Smith scored twice in the second period, the first of which was another power play goal, to pad the EL lead to 3-0.

Gilbert got on the board twice and Matt Nadeau scored the Eddies’ sixth goal in a three minute span midway through the third period to complete the scoring.

Bennett stopped all 18 pucks he saw during the game to record the shutout. For St. Dom’s, Gervais left the net after the sixth EL goal, giving way to Brady Blackman who made three saves in mop-up duty.

jpelletier@sunjournal.com

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