Hometeam: Backup goalie stars for No. 4 Panthers
One thing Marlboro High hockey coach Mike O’Brien won’t have to be concerned with for a while is depth at goaltender.
With junior Ben Wickelman holding his own as the starter, Brian Powell is emerging as a solid backup. The freshman got the call Wednesday night and stopped 23 of 24 shots to help the fourth-ranked Panthers to a 4-1 victory over Leominster High at Navin Rink.
“My mind-set coming in was to stop all their shots,” said Powell, starting his second game of the season. “I’ll remember this one for a while. It was a lot of fun tonight.”
With the Panthers (5-2) clinging to a 2-1 lead after two periods, their athleticism and depth finally wore down the Blue Devils (3-4).
Junior Jake Chiasson scored twice in the final period. Just 3:59 into the period, Chiasson blistered a shot that sailed over the glove of Logan Bergeron (18 saves). With less than two minutes to go, Chiasson pushed in a rebound to make it a three-goal game.
“Leominster is always a tough game, but I don’t think this year we will have an easy game on our schedule,” O’Brien said. “All the games we have won have been a battle. But one thing is we seem to be finding a way in the third period to be playing our best hockey, and that’s a good thing.
“Brian is a very good goalie as he showed tonight. He may be just a freshman, but I think he plays beyond his years. We have two good goalies, and whoever’s in there is going to give us a good chance to win.”
Marlboro senior Nick Mosca got the scoring started on the power play, launching a shot from 20 feet through traffic to give the Panthers a 1-0 lead at 7:08.
The score stayed that way until 1:48 of the middle period. Bergeron came out of the crease to clear the puck, but failed to get back in time to cover the open net, which sophomore Erik Bastarache found to give Marlboro a 2-0 lead.
Just a minute later, Leominster junior Cam Cordio rifled a shot past Powell to narrow the gap to 2-1.
“As a body of work, I felt tonight was one of our better games,” Blue Devils coach Chris Kyne said. “We competed and played with some passion. The guys executed the forecheck and got pucks to the net.
“Their goalie played fantastic. He took away angles and played steady and was steering pucks to the corner. He didn’t play like a freshman. He played like an upperclassman. I was very impressed with the way he played.”
Contact John McGuirk at sports@telegram.com. Follow him on Twitter @tgsports.