FALMOUTH — St. Dominic Academy finally met its match after a high-scoring start to the season. The Saints faced off with the other undefeated team in Northern Maine girls’ hockey — Greely — and the host Rangers stymied St. Dom’s in a 2-1 victory at Family Ice Center on Wednesday night.

The Saints (8-1) showed their nerves early, as they couldn’t clear the puck out of their own end in the opening minute. The more seasoned Rangers (11-0) took advantage, as Maura Verrill’s shot from the right point — Greely’s first shot on goal of the game — slipped past St. Dom’s goalie Payton Winslow 31 seconds into the contest.

“She’d probably tell you she was screened,” St. Dom’s head coach Paul Gosselin said of Winslow. “It was just a dump-in, and it just was on net, and unfortunately it went in.”

The tense moments continued for the Saints before the game finally came to them. A pair of close calls less than four minutes in started to give St. Dom’s some confidence, and a power play midway through the opening period presented a prime chance for the Saints to even up the score.

That didn’t come during the man-advantage, as Greely blocked more shots (three) than allowed it allowed to get through to goalie Nica Todd (two).

The way St. Dom’s was playing for the latter part of the period, it was only a matter of time before the equalizer came. It finally did with just over three minutes left, as Emma Theriault’s shot from the left point created a scrum, and the puck made its way from Avery Lutrzykowski to Kristina Cornelio, and then to Bugsy Hammerton, who put it past Todd to make it 1-1.

“We work on crashing the net and looking for the rebounds,” Gosselin said. “When a goalie’s on, those are the type of goals you got to get.”

The goalies starred in the second period. Todd stopped a pair of 1-on-0s against Lutrzykowski and Hammerton in the first six minutes, and Winslow made a pair of stops during a Greely power play and a right-pad save against Verrill from the blue line at the horn.

“I think both goalies made good stops,” Gosselin said. “It was an up-and-down period, and they kept it close.”

The Rangers came out firing in the third, and retook the lead less than four minutes in. Bridget Roberts slipped a shot under Winslow from the lower left circle, off passes from Storey and Ellie Schad.

Greely kept the pressure up to try and protect its precious lead. The Rangers did just that during a Saints’ power play, as St. Dom’s didn’t get a shot off on the man-advantage until 10 seconds left.

As they did all game, the Rangers showed a propensity for blocking shots before they could get to Todd. The Saints sent seven shots on Todd in the final period — including one that induced a scrum in front of the net with 48 seconds left and a last-ditch attempt by Lutrzykowski at the final horn — but seemingly just as many were rejected by Greely skaters.

“That’s huge. Something we talk about but haven’t seen,” Greely head coach Nate Guerin said of the blocked shots. “We haven’t been that successful with that until the game.”

St. Dom’s finished with one more shot than Greely (25-24). It was a normal amount of shots for the Saints, but at a much lower success rate for a team that had scored at least seven goals in each of its previous eight games.

“I think both teams, coming out of this one, both teams feel like they could have played better,” Guerin said. “I think we were lucky to be on the winning side of that — it was kind of a coin flip. I look for our next meeting to be much improved by both teams.”

The Saints will look to get back on track Saturday when they face rival Edward Little/Leavitt/Poland at their shared home of Norway Savings Bank Arena.

“I’ve got 80 percent freshmen, so a lot of this is new to them,” Gosselin said. “It’s part of the growing process that we’ve got to go through. When you’ve got a rookie team, you got to go through those growing pains.”

wkramlich@sunjournal.com

Copy the Story Link