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on 9-game
roll,enjoy
some rest
It’s not a bad time for a little break.
But it’s tough for any team to be sitting on the sidelines when it is playing so well.
Such is the case with the Woodstock Academy boys’ hockey team.
The Centaurs are 15-4 and winners of their last nine games following a 6-3 win over Housatonic early last week.
Their final regular season game against New Milford was moved from Feb. 22 to 6:30 p.m. Saturday.
It meant just about two weeks of down time
At least for the seniors.
Many of the juniors, sophomores and freshmen played some junior varsity contests last week.
“All those guys will still be on the ice and (this) week, we will have three days of practice and focus on some of the things we still have to do. We’re just going to try and keep the legs going, fine tune what we can, and be ready for that final regular season game,” said Woodstock Academy coach Kevin Bisson.
Woodstock Academy junior goalie Colin Liscomb said, despite the win streak, not everything is perfect.
“I think we have to figure out the penalty situation, that’s a big, bad thing for us. We’ve been struggling a bit on break outs, but other than that, things are going smoothly,” Liscomb said.
Penalties were a bit of a problem for the Centaurs especially late in the game against the Housatonic Regional Cooperative.
“It’s hard to be too happy (about the win),” Bisson said. “I think we got pretty lucky at the end of the day. We were playing a certain way, everything was looking good, everybody was doing the right thing and then we just completely stopped and sunk to the level of the opponent. They were taking all these unsportsmanlike and technical penalties and we just started to become that. It’s aggravating to think that, we haven’t been that, haven’t been that for a long time, and all of a sudden, here we are back in that mode.”
In the final 1 minute, 43 seconds of the game, three Centaurs were sent to the penalty box for various reasons.
The Mountaineers (4-11-1), down by two goals at the time, tried to take advantage by pulling their goalie to create a 6-on-3 situation.
Even with their top defensemen in the penalty box, the Centaurs failed to yield a goal.
The Centaurs handed Housatonic a 3-1 loss on their home ice back on Jan. 20. But they found themselves down early to the Mountaineers.
Housatonic scored 6 ½ minutes into the game. But the Centaurs didn’t take long to respond. Jake Starr, off a pass from Austen LeDonne, found Nick Chubbuck streaking down the middle of the ice. He delivered the pass and Chubbuck followed with the game-tying goal 30 seconds after the Mountaineers had scored.
Kyle Brennan put the Centaurs up a goal 2:10 later and Woodstock Academy enjoyed a 3-1 lead when Chubbuck scored for a second time and fourth of the season with 1:38 to play.
But Housatonic came back to tie the game with a pair of second period goals.
“We got away from what we were doing best which was moving the puck,” Woodstock Academy assistant coach Bob Donahue said of the second-period turnaround. The strategy was sound.
The Centaurs forged their way back into the lead with a goal from Guerin Favreau with 12:18 to play.
“In the first period, Doug (Newton) and I were working it around a lot and it was working pretty good. I got an assist on Kyle’s goal. It didn’t really happen in the second, but we found it again in the third and I think that’s what opened up the shooting lane,” Favreau said.
Starr added an unassisted insurance goal with 4:39 left before Favreau found the empty net as the buzzer sounded to account for the final.
It was Favreau’s 33rd goal of the season.
“I think we’ve really come together as a team. We’ve bonded and we have figured out what each other’s tendencies are and have worked with it,” Liscomb said.
Marc Allard
Director of Sports Information
The Woodstock Academy
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