Waltham, MA – MassNZ was in the house from the beautiful Bentley Arena as the Lexington Minutemen hosted the Waltham Hawks for a pre-holiday matchup. Oddly enough, despite this rink being located in Waltham this was a home game for Lexington. Additionally, this game was a rematch of last year’s 32 vs 33 seed play-in game in the MIAA State D1 Tournament that Lexington was able to win 6-3 to advance to take on the top seed in the bracket. This was our Director’s first game at Bentley Arena and the facility was immaculate and very well laid out, there isn’t a bad seat in the house to watch a game and everything down to the concrete of the seating bowl was clean enough to eat off of. But in any event, enough about venues, we had a game to play.
The opening minutes of the first period were largely uneventful as both teams took a couple of shifts to get fully engaged and feel the flow. Things started to pick up three minutes in and Waltham hemmed Lexington into their own zone. This was how they broke the seal on the scoring this afternoon. It was a point shot by senior Waltham defender Nico Dischino that pinballed off the goalie’s pads and there to retrieve it was sophomore forward Brendan Butler who deposited the loose change to make it 1-0 Waltham. The remainder of the period featured a lot of pressure by the Hawks and a couple of good looks for the Minutemen, but we would wrap up the period still at 1-0.
In the middle frame, the physicality picked up, as did the penalties. We saw a handful of infractions whistled throughout the period which broke up the flow a bit and each team traded power play chances. Once again, Waltham was able to throw shots on net and they attacked the resulting rebounds, but there were a couple of posts that rang out on some of those putback attempts and no corresponding goals. As we got deeper into the period, Lexington began to create more pressure and broke through 11 minutes in when big junior Adam O’Shaughnessy drove to the net and put a shot on net that created a rebound in the slot which junior forward Rob Semanchick was able to fire home to tie things up at 1-1. That was where we stood after 30 minutes of play. We moved on to the third period to decide a winner.
In the third period, both teams were looking for the game-winner but gripping the sticks a bit tight. There were a few turnovers in the neutral zone and overskated pucks as each team tried to make that big play. Ultimately, things began to settle down a few minutes into the action. The Minutemen would grab the initial advantage when Rob Semanchick fired a pass to the slot from below the goal line that freshman Aaron Yu would bury to make it 2-1 Lexington. Immediately after that goal was scored, the Hawks went to work and responded just under two minutes later when junior Carlo Attardo went hard to the net and created a rebound with his shot that was banged home by pinching freshman defender Ray Devincent. We were once again knotted up, this time at 2-2. This game was crying out for a hero, for someone to step up and win it and both teams created chances in Grade A areas, but we remained tied. That is, until there were three minutes to go and junior Connor Chiasson made the play of the game, stealing the puck in the neutral zone, accelerating alone into the attacking zone and burying on the breakaway to make it 3-2 Hawks. The bench erupted, cognizant of last year’s playoff loss, it meant a lot to this team to flip the script. Less than a minute after that goal was scored, Lexington called timeout and pulled their goalie with 2:20 left on the clock. They made a valiant effort to score the equalizer, but Waltham’s ability to get sticks and bodies in lanes was too much to overcome. The Hawks would take the win 3-2 in regulation.
Three Stars:
- F Connor Chiasson, Waltham
- F Rob Semanchick, Lexington
- F Adam O’Shaughnessy, Lexington