Falmouth Boys Hockey Beats Sandwich High School

By: Rich Maclone
Published: 01/21/11

 Facing the Atlantic Coast League’s best goaltender on Wednesday night, the Falmouth High School boys’ ice hockey team knew that nothing was going to come easily and that they were going to have to work hard to leave Gallo Ice Arena with a victory. Work hard they did and the end result of that toiling was a well-earned 3-0 victory over the Blue Knights, Falmouth’s third straight victory.

FHS is now 5-3-2 overall on the season with the win. The team boasts a mark of 4-0-1 in the Atlantic Coast League and is in a dead heat with Marshfield for the top spot in the conference. The two teams played to a draw a few weeks back and each have held serve against the rest of the ACL.

On Wednesday night the stat sheet was not full of names that regularly appear on it. Among them Travis Howe, P.J. Moore and Zack Zaino had two goals heading into the showdown with the Blue Knights, but the troika each got one to help put FHS over the top.

“They’ve been on a bit of a roll and we knew that their goaltender was the key and that we had to get pucks in on him, regardless of how we did it,” Head Coach Buddy Ferreira said.

Goaltender Brandon Moore had a strong game in net for the Clippers. Moore, who has started every game so far this year, earned his first shutout of the season as he made 17 saves in the game, including a tester late in the game when the Clippers were killing a 5-on-3 power play.

“He made all the key saves. He didn’t give up any bunnies; he made some key saves. They had a couple of big power plays and he made the saves,” Head Coach Buddy Ferreira said.

Howe, a junior defenseman, got his first varsity goal at the 13:25 mark of the first period to put the Clippers on top heading to the first intermission. Sophomore forward Durham Ghelfi broke up the right wing and held the puck a long time before finally dishing it off to the far post as he was passing the net. Howe, who trailed the play up the left wing, met the puck and ripped it by Pat Farrington to make it a 1-0 game.

FHS got another hustle goal in the second period as P.J. Moore picked up his second of the season as he crashed the net and muscled one by Farrington at the 6:29 mark. Connor McCarthy and Matt Kinchla assisted on the play as McCarthy broke it over the red line and hit Kinchla on the right side for a snap shot. Farrington halted the initial blast but Moore dug it out and worked it over the goal line.

The third period was mostly played in the neutral zone with neither team establishing much of an attack. The goal by Zaino was one a bit on the fluky side, but it counted just the same. With FHS killing off a penalty, the sophomore defenseman collected a loose puck near the red line and let a bouncing shot go from near the right wing face-off circle outside the offensive zone. The puck took a funky hop and went up and over Farrington’s stick and in the back of the goal for the backbreaker that iced things for the Clippers.

“We really came out and played tough, and that’s what it’s all about. We’re all muckers; there aren’t any coast-to-coast guys, and today we needed (Andrew) Kelly, (Aaron) Orchiuck and (Tryone) Reine’s line to pick it up, and they did...I needed that line to come out today and shut down their big line and they did a good job.”

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