AUBURN — Celebrate the persistence, or curse the penalties.
There are two ways to look at the season opener for the Edward Little boys’ hockey team. The Red Eddies were short-handed too early, too late and too often Saturday night, which is a big reason Brunswick skated away from Norway Savings Bank Arena with a 2-1 victory.
For a team top-heavy with sophomores, however, giving one of the on-paper favorites in Eastern Class A all it could handle is cause for cautious optimism, if not muted celebration.
“Good hockey game, I thought on both ends,” EL coach Craig Latuscha said. “We played pretty well throughout. We had our opportunities. We just played against a team heavy with juniors and seniors with a team that’s heavy with freshmen and sophomores and played pretty well.”
Sophomore Liam Benson scored on an assist from junior captain Branden Dyer with 8:13 remaining regulation to cut the deficit in half and give the Red Eddies a chance.
But after giving up a 5-on-3 goal to Brunswick early in the game, EL again went two men down with 3:33 to play.
The Eddies’ defense didn’t buckle, but the damage to its offensive momentum had been done.
And when EL did draw a penalty to earn a power play in the final minute of regulation, the Brunswick defense — led by Rudy Dumont — tied up the puck in the corner and prevent the Eddies from pulling goalie Devin Dumont for a 6-on-4 look until there were under 10 seconds to play.
EL never got a clean shot before the horn against Blake Alexander, who made 21 saves to safeguard the win.
“He played well last year and he’s carried that over. He’s a senior and he’s a go-to guy for us,” Brunswick coach Mike Routhier said.
EL outshot Brunswick by a two-to-one margin in the first period, but Brunswick capitalized on a brief 5-on-3 to land the lead.
Senior defenseman Cam Heatley connected with a blast from the left point that caromed off Dumont’s midsection and into the goal. Jacob McGowan and Ryan Maciejewski registered the assists at 3:44.
The Red Eddies had two terrific, relatively uncontested opportunities by Aaron Vaillancourt and Sedrick Simons, the latter ringing the near post late in the period.
Alexander made a dozen stops to protect the lead going into intermission.
“One shot here or there and you never know what the game might have been like,” Latuscha said.
Faced with less opposition in the second period, Alexander was just as brilliant. He reached back around his waist to swipe Simons’ blast out of midair with his glove late in the stanza.
The Dragons rode that momentum to the other end of the ice and padded their lead shortly thereafter. After catching Dumont sprawled out in the crease, Matt Brooks dished to his right and located Jacob Parent, who filled the open net with 2:04 left.
EL also encountered another two-man disadvantage for nearly a minute at the outset of the second period. This time, Dumont made four tough saves to help the Red Eddies escape.
“Good penalties or bad penalties, it doesn’t matter. They were penalties, and we took them,” Latuscha said. “I thought we did play pretty well on the penalty kill, and that was a positive.”
The 5-on-3 theme continued in the Eddies’ favor early in the third period, but a blocked shot at the point by Brooks and Alexander’s denials of Cade Chapman and Chris Poisson kept the Eddies off the board.
“We’ve got 11 seniors and seven juniors, so we’re a veteran team, but there were times tonight when we made some rookie mistakes with some undisciplined play,” Routhier said.
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