Tewksbury, MA – MassNZ was back at the Breakaway Ice Center where the Tewksbury Redmen hosted the Billerica Indians on this Monday afternoon at 3:50pm. This was an important game for both teams as one of the banner games on this Martin Luther King Jr. Day featuring the #1 ranked Indians and the #3 ranked Redmen. Whoever won would likely lay claim to the top spot in Division 2. The rink was juiced up and ready to go…
From the opening faceoff, the game started physically and fast-paced moving up and down the ice. But the Redmen offense got going first by hammering pucks at the net and hoping one would bounce in. Then the Redman caught a break with a two-on-one as freshman forward Jack Ryan received a back door tap in from junior forward Jackson Feudo to take a 1-0 lead. But a couple minutes later there was a loose puck floating around in front of the Redman net and stellar senior forward Danny Viscione found the puck on his stick to put it into the back of the net to get the Indians on the board to tie the game at 1-1. With the first period winding down, the Indians took a penalty to put the Redman on the power play and gave them a chance to take the lead back. The Indians were able to shut out the Redman on the penalty kill to keep this game tied as the period ended.
The second period opened with neither team’s offense able to find the back of the net until the sophomore forward Kevin Andriolo picked up the puck in the neutral ice to walk into the Indians’ zone with a defender in front of him and he was able to make a shifty move to get behind the defender with some room to get a shot off to put it up over the glove of the Indians’ goaltender to give the Redman the lead back at 2-1. The Indians didn’t take long to answer back when the junior forward Timmy Murphy found the puck on his stick at the top of the circle and beat the Redman goaltender to tie the game for the second time this afternoon 2-2. As this game went on, the momentum shifted back and forth: a minute and a half later, senior defenseman John Burns got the puck at the blue line and took a shot that beat the Redman goaltender upstairs to give the Indians their first lead of the afternoon 3-2. With four minutes remaining in this second period, the Indians earned a power play with a chance to extend their lead but the Redman were able to kill the penalty off with no damage done and that brought us to the end of the second.
The third period kicked off with both offenses not able to get anything going until three minutes in. Senior forward Eddie Conley found the space to walk into the zone and ripped one glove side to beat the Redman goaltender to take the lead 4-2. Then two minutes later, senior defenseman Nolan Dawson shot one from the blue line that found the stick of Viscione for his second of the night to give the Indians a lead of 5-2. After letting up four unanswered goals, the Redmen called a timeout to try and get something sparked in the offense. As this game was ticking down with 2:30 left, the Redman were awarded a power play to try and claw their way back into this game. However, they were only got one shot on net a little over a minute into the power play and the Redman would later a penalty that to nullify the chance and the game would end with Billerica remaining unbeaten at 12-0-0: 5-2 was our final.
Three Stars:
- F Danny Viscione, Billerica
- G Steve MacIntosh, Billerica
- F Timmy Murphy, Billerica