Falmouth First Line Lights It Up Again In 8-2 Victory

By: Rich Maclone
Published: 01/04/13

Plymouth South learned what Nauset already knew on Wednesday night, that right now there’s just no stopping Falmouth’s first line.

The trio of Durham Ghelfi, Nicky Lineaweaver and Cyrus Wickersham followed up their seven-goal game against the Warriors with another one on Wednesday night at Armstrong Arena in Plymouth. The offensive onslaught led Falmouth to an easy 8-2 win over the Panthers, who were formerly atop the Atlantic Coast League standings as they entered the contest at 3-0 in league play, and 6-1 overall.

Falmouth took over the top spot by themselves as they improved to 3-0 against the league, and 3-1-3 overall.

“(Plymouth) was playing well…and we had to come in here and make a statement early and let ourselves know that we were in this game, and that’s what we did,” a pleased FHS Head Coach Buddy Ferreira said following his team’s second straight win. “We had a great first period.”

The first liners scored four times in the first period, with three of those goals coming in a span of just 94 seconds. They went on to get two more in the second and another one in the third period.

“They just love the game,” Ferreira said about the troika. “They love the game and they’re unselfish, and they’re always looking for the other guy, and you’ve got to love that about them. They gave up a couple of chances tonight looking for each other, and I told them ‘guys, in a 1-1 game, you can’t do that.’ ”

At the 5:30 mark of the first FHS got on the board with a power play goal by Lineaweaver, who one-timed a feed from Ghelfi for the early lead.

Late in the period the group exploded for three quick ones to open up a dominant advantage. At 12:15 Ghelfi sent a feed from behind the cage to Lineaweaver, who one-timed a backhander under the crossbar. Then, 15 seconds later, Wickersham popped in a rebound of a Lineaweaver shot to make it 3-0. On the next shift Ghelfi made it 4-0 as he skated out of the corner and used a pretty move to his backhand to undress the keeper.

South fought back to make it interesting in the second with a pair of quick goals early in the period. Tim Elrick scored on a shot from in front at the 1:25 mark and then, at 5:05, Tony Gianelli fired one from the slot past Jake Beaton to pull the home team within a pair.

South had chances to make it a one-goal game, especially late in the period with a 5-on-3 power play, but the Clippers held the fort. Beaton (20 saves) made a handful of big stops along the way to his first FHS victory in the net and the Clippers answered back with two late goals to get the lead back up to four goals.

At the 13-minute mark, with FHS skating down a man, Ghelfi got his second of the game for FHS. The forward stole the puck along the right wing wall and sent it to Wickersham for a quick shot on net. The keeper stopped the initial bid, but Ghelfi crashed the net and drove home the rebound. Then, with 11 seconds left in the second, Lineaweaver got his third of the game off another nice feed from Ghelfi, making it 6-2.

“They had a 5-on-3, and they could have made it 4-3, and our penalty killers were huge,” Ferreira said. “They did a great job, and then they came back down, and it was 5-on-4, and we scored.”

Falmouth got two more in the second. Matt Kinchla scored his first of the season at 8:36 to get the Clippers’ seventh marker of the night, corralling a Robbie Souza rebound and snapping it inside the near post. The Clippers then added a pretty goal by Wickersham at 11:19 when Tom Tobey fired a pass from his own end up the ice to the far blue line for Lineaweaver, who one-touched it to Wickersham for a break-in on the goalie.

Leave a Reply

In order to comment you need to be logged in.