NORTH BRIDGTON — Windham/Westbrook/Bonny Eagle need only review their two meetings with Lake Region/Fryeburg Academy/Oxford Hills this year to learn the value of discipline on the ice.
The Trail Blazers scored five unanswered goals, four via the power play, to defeat the Ice Cats 5-1 at Chalmers Ice Arena on Tuesday.
The game was a reversal of their first meeting on Jan. 11, which the Ice Cats won by an identical 5-1 score.
“When we played them the first time,” Trail Blazers coach Greg LeClair said, “we got up 1-0 on a power play goal. We took a penalty late in the first period, they scored on it and it completely shifted the momentum of the game and we didn’t recover from it. We were the team taking penalties in the last two periods. You can’t win playing four-on-five hockey.”
The Trail Blazers, who outshot the Ice Cats, 32-26, were 4-for-6 on the power play Tuesday. The Ice Cats went 0-for-3.
“That’s definitely a huge thing we’ve been going through a lot is getting rid of the penalties taken,” Trail Blazers sophomore forward Travis Brown said. “I think we showed that tonight. We were super disciplined.”
“I give them credit,” Ice Cats coach Dave LePage said. “They played a good game. They wanted it more than we did.”
Brown and Grayson Krause scored two goals apiece for the Trail Blazers (4-12-0).
The Blazers controlled the first period, outshooting the Ice Cats 11-4. But junior defenseman Bryce Micklon beat freshman goalie Porter Krause (25 saves) top corner on an end-to-end rush to give the Cats a 1-0 lead on their first shot 3:21 into the game.
“The message to the kids after the first period was we had some little things to clean up, but the goal he scored was a great shot,” LeClair said. “I didn’t think we were playing poorly. I thought that if we kept our composure through the remainder of the game, we’d get our chances.”
The Ice Cats (7-8-1) nearly doubled their lead 12 minutes into the second period when Will Galligan stole the puck just inside the Blazers’ blue line, turned on a dime and started a two-on-one with Peyton McMurray, whose shot to Krause’s right went wide.
Lake Region/Fryeburg Academy/Oxford Hills stepped up its offensive pressure with 10 shots to the Blazers’ six in the second period, but Chris Westgate found Grayson Krause on a pass in front for the equalizer at 11:45 of the second.
“We came out in the second and were able to get the puck in deep and play our game,” LePage said. “Defensively, we struggle a lot, so our game plan has always been let’s play in their zone.
“The first period we were up 1-0 but they were all over us in our own end, so the solution there was to try to get it into our end and use our speed and skating. But the goalie made the saves when he needed to and in the third period, we find ourselves panicking.”
The Ice Cats started to fall apart five minutes into the third with back-to-back penalties that gave the Trail Blazers a 5-on-3 for 55 seconds.
Windham/Westbrook/Bonny Eagle wasted little time, winning the faceoff to Grayson Krause, who fired from the right point as Brown positioned himself in front for the rebound off of goalie Bobby LeBlanc’s (27 saves) left pad. Brown backhanded the rebound home six seconds into the two-man advantage for a 2-1 lead.
“I was really just in the right place in the right time and I just poked it in,” Brown said. “That was a huge game-changer for us. It really changed the momentum.”
“We talked about, when we got that power play, slowing the game down, make the right play, don’t force things, ” LeClair said. “And we did. We got the puck on the net, the rebound came right where it needed to be, and Travis has been scoring on rebound goals like that all year.”
“We knew if we got the next one, we would be in a good spot,” LeClair said.
The next three came with the help of a five-minute major assessed to the Ice Cats’ Colby Turcotte with 3:38 remaining. Krause scored the first insurance goal with 2:59 to go in the game, then Brown and Jordan Cantz salted it away with goals 29 seconds apart.
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