EASTHAMPTON — At the end of the second period of Thursday night’s hockey game between Belchertown and Easthampton, Eagles senior captain Zack Roy made contact with Orioles goalie Donald Rogers after the whistle.
In response, the Belchertown defensemen shoved Roy, leading to a shoving match with the two teams. A total of four penalties were given out with 13 seconds remaining in the frame and Easthampton ahead 3-1.
The skirmish fired the Eagles up and was the turning point of the game, and it showed in the third period.
Easthampton went on to score four goals over the final 15 minutes, including three within two minutes and 15 seconds of each other, to cruise to a 7-1 win over Belchertown in the teams’ second meeting of the season at Lossone Rink.
A six-goal victory to bring Easthampton’s record to 4-0 still didn’t satisfy Eagles head coach Tim Pfau.
“I thought we played awful, honest to god,” he said. “There is still a lot of work to be done. [Compared to] the potential that this team has and where we could be, I’d grade us a C for tonight. We didn’t play like us. It should look a lot better than that. We have to be mentally stronger and can’t get sucked into the stupid penalties.”
Four different players found the back of the net for Easthampton, three of whom scored twice. Parker Christy, Gabe Growhoski, and Robert Herman tallied two times, while Mikey Thompson scored the seventh and final goal of the game. Drew Thompson had three assists to lead the six different Eagles to tally an assist in the win.
At the beginning of the year, Pfau told his team that they have the firepower to have several players score at least 10 goals. That depth and talent was on display on Thursday.
“To start the year I told them that we’re gonna have five, six guys that have double-digit goals and 20-plus points,” Pfau said. “This team is loaded. We’re a good team. Even when we’re playing bad like tonight, we can find ways to win. And that’s a credit to the guys on the ice.”
Belchertown hung in with Easthampton for the better half of two periods. After Christy made it 1-0 Eagles, Charlie Fijal knotted it back up at one off an assist from Brodie St. Laurent. Fijal is the best offensive player on the team, so Easthampton swarmed him after he squeezed free for his goal.
“He’s our primary source of offense. We run a lot of our offense through him,” McCarthy said of Fijal. “But it’s gotta be a team effort if we want to have more success this season.”
The game was 2-1 late into the second before Herman’s first of two goals with 1:33 left doubled the Orioles deficit.
In the third period, however, everything went wrong for Belchertown.
“We were right with them for most of the game, it was just a couple of bad bounces in the last period,” Belchertown head coach Jordan McCarthy said. “I’m proud of the effort we put in. We got away from our game a little bit, which gave them a lot of time and space – that’s been a little bit of our issue lately. We need to get harder on pucks, and put more pressure on teams so they’re the ones making mistakes. We did that in the first half of the first and second periods, but we couldn’t sustain it the whole way through.”
Those few bad bounces were the difference between a close game coming down to the wire and the result that was shown on Thursday.
Even Pfau admitted that Easthampton struggled to generate offense against the Belchertown defense. But the Orioles gifted the Eagles with several turnovers in scoring positions, which led to the onslaught of goals in the third.
“I think we capitalized on the mistakes by them. We didn’t do much to make it happen, that’s why I say we could be a whole lot better,” Pfau said. “We had so many chances in front of the net that we just couldn’t bury. But we did capitalize on their mistakes, which is great. That’s hockey, we have to do that. And we did come out in the third and have some success.”
Easthampton outshot Belchertown 55-13. Rogers had a whopping 48 saves, while Paige Galpin snagged 12 out of the 13 in her direction.
The Eagles (4-0) return to the ice the day after Christmas, Dec. 26, against Southwick at 1 p.m. back at Lossone Rink.
The Orioles (1-4) head to Greenfield on Saturday night at 6:30 p.m. for a matchup with the western Mass. heavyweight Green Wave.
