Boys hockey: Spencer Morgan scores twice, and St. Dom’s pulls away from Tigers

AUBURN — A slow start didn’t deter the St. Dom’s boys hockey team Wednesday.

A two-goal effort by Spencer Morgan helped the Saints to a 6-0 win over Biddeford/Old Orchard Beach/Massabesic.

“I talked to them before the game about trap games, and you have to keep playing through,” St. Dom’s coach Dan D’Auteuil said. “First period, we didn’t play well, and we picked it up in the second. Their goalie played a hell of a game.”

Tigers goalie Connor Thibault made 42 saves in the losing effort.

“He definitely made a lot of stops, and we were trying to crash the net and get rebounds,” Morgan said.

Ethan Pelletier scored the lone goal in the first period for the Saints (10-3-1) when Rhys Levasseur fed a pass to him in the slot midway through the stanza.

The Tigers (1-13) had a little pushback off the ensuing faceoff and got their first shot on goal.

“Our goal today was to dissect the game in five-minute intervals and see if we could get the most in each five-minute interval,” Tigers coach Ethan Bassile said. “I was happy with a lot of stuff that we did in the first period. We were trying to focus on getting the first goal if possible.”

Morgan put the Saints up 2-0 early in the second period, scoring on a rebound after Colton Dionne’s initial shot.

“It’s important to get a good start in the second period — we didn’t have our best first period,” Morgan said. “We are looking to carry momentum from game to game, and it was important to get a goal at the beginning.”

Nearly four minutes into the middle frame, St. Dom’s defenseman Joey Adams found Curtis Wheeler with a stretch pass from the defensive zone to the neutral zone, and Wheeler finished the play for a breakaway goal.

“He made a great pass. And that’s another thing we have been working on, is that stretch pass,” D’Auteuil said of Adams. “We did it, and they flew and he hit the pass on the mark.”

The Biddeford co-op had a few chances in the second, including a shot attempt on Lynn (nine saves) that fluttered like a changeup and hit the bottom of the post. The Tigers also had another attempt hit the post later in the period.

“We had a couple of situations like that, where we could probably put one in tonight,” Bassile said. “Especially in the second period on that empty net there. That’s probably one we should have had. That’s where we are right now — we aren’t getting the bounces, whereas our opponents are getting bounces.”

St. Dom’s Tyler Randall fired a shot that got through traffic late in the second period for a 4-0 advantage.

“He did what we asked him to do, and he got the puck on his stick and he fired it,” D’Auteuil said. “He caught the goalie off guard and buried it.”

Randall’s teammates gave him the player of the game honors.

St. Dom’s leading scorer, Tim Ouellette, notched the Saints’ fifth goal in the third period.

“We were joking with them the whole game that they hadn’t scored,” D’Auteuil said of the first line. “We were getting it from the yellow line, our blue line, and we had a first-time goal scorer in Tyler.”

Morgan scored his second of the game midway through the third.