AUBURN — St. Dom’s controlled the game and in the second period the Saints finally broke through in a girls hockey victory over Edward Little/Leavitt/Poland on Wednesday.
The Saints defeated the Red Hornets 6-0 at Norway Savings Bank Arena, despite Izzy Jalbert making 39 saves in the loss.
“Not only did she stop a lot of shots, they blocked a ton,” St. Dom’s coach Paul Gosselin said. “I don’t know how many it ended up with, but I bet you 20 were blocked. It was definitely a shooting gallery.”
The Saints had 20 more shot attempts that didn’t hit the net.
Red Hornets coach Dana Berube said they were missing a few players, but was proud with his team’s effort.
“We were playing girls that don’t get that much ice time and they did very well,” Berube said. “Izzy played fantastic, but we didn’t have that extra gear.”
Alana Wheeler made six stops in the shutout.
“She has been doing well lately. It’s always nice to get the goose egg,” Gosselin said.
Lily Fortin led the Saints with a goal and an assist.
“It’s a big ask to get an eighth-grader to play center,” Gosselin said. “We don’t really match up the lines, but she played really well.”
Jalbert kept the Saints (8-5) off the board in the first period, when St. Dom’s controlled the puck possession.
Edward Little/Leavitt/Poland (6-6) had one power play in the period but couldn’t get anything set up in the offensive zone.
Jalbert stopped the first 16 shots of the game, but the Saints got on the board on the man advantage 6:40 into the second period when there was a turnover in front of the Red Hornets’ crease and Aiva Dorman potted the puck for a 1-0 lead.
“Right place, right time,” Gosselin said. “We preach that all the time. She was there. It worked out well.”
While Jalbert kept the Red Hornets within one, the Saints had plenty of shot attempts that went wide of the cage or hit bodies.
“I realized we were all shooting at their shin pads, so we had to try to find open space,” Lily Fortin said.
Emily Andrews extended the lead to 2-0 when she fired the puck past Jalbert just below the left circle. Lily Fortin had the lone assist.
“You are always nervous when you are shooting a lot of pucks and they go down once and score,” Gosselin said. “It wasn’t the case and we got breathing room and in the third period, we opened it up at the end.”
The Red Hornets had another power play early in the third period but had shot attempts blocked by Saints defenders.
“I thought we both teams did a good job blocking shots,” Berube said. “They are a well-coached team, and they have a lot of young players.”
Aubrey Fortin and Georgie Davidson started the scoring in the third period for the Saints. The goals came 48 seconds apart from each other.
“I thought we did a great job; our chemistry didn’t start clicking until the third period,” Lily Fortin said. “But after our coaches talked to us, I thought we did a great job with chemistry.”
Lily Fortin slid a backhander past Jalbert with about a minute remaining on a breakaway and the Saints added one more on a Gabby Allen goal with 10 seconds remaining to extend the lead to 6-0.
“The relief was great. I felt like I had a bad game at first, but my game stepped up when I got that goal,” Lily Fortin said.
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