Bishop Guertin boys hockey scores five times in second period to get past Bow

CONCORD - A five-goal eruption in the second period powered the Bishop Guertin High School boys hockey team to a 5-3 Division I victory over Bow on Thursday at Everett Arena.

The Cardinals (8-2) erased any memory of Bow’s 1-0 first-intermission lead and took a 5-2 advantage into the third after second-period goals from Pat Madden, Sean Wilson, Ben Young (short-handed), Aaron Pratt and Max Trawick.

Madden poked the puck by Bow senior goaltender Ethan Berrigan (29 saves) 3:47 into the second stanza to knot the score. Wilson broke the one-goal deadlock with his wrister from the right circle following a cross-ice feed from Declan Wilkie 6:48 into the frame.

Bow (3-6) pulled even at 2-2 via CJ Smethurt’s power-play goal with 6:29 left in the second period. The Cardinals answered 11 seconds later with Young’s short-handed tally to take a 3-2 lead. Both Smethurst and Young’s goals came during a five-minute major boarding penalty on Cardinals defenseman Mike Schaaf. 

Pratt and Trawick both scored inside the final 2:08 of the middle frame to build the Cardinals’ three-goal cushion entering the second intermission. 

“I heard one guy on the bench after we scored the second (goal), he was like, ‘Alright, it keeps coming from here,’” Young said. “And yeah, we got a few after that.”

Cardinals coach Gary Bishop credited an uptick in physicality and his team’s numbers advantage over the Falcons for its second-period outburst. 

“We’re running four lines. (Bow is) running two and a half,” Bishop said. “Sooner or later, 12 guys are going to outrun six. I think our foot speed got to them in that second period.”

Bow senior Jake Mielcarz, who logged two goals and an assist, scored off a Falcons faceoff win 22 seconds into the third period to cap the game’s scoring. Bishop Guertin goaltender Evan Butler made six of his 20 saves and the Cardinals killed off the three penalties they took after Mielcarz’s second goal to close out the win. 

“We just try to block shots a lot and whenever (Bow) lost it, we tried to forecheck, poke it, get it out,” Young said of the Cardinals’ third-period performance. 

Bow kept the Cardinals to the perimeter on defense and relied on the counter rushes to generate its offense in the first period. That strategy led to Mielcarz’s breakaway goal that opened the game’s scoring with 5:47 left in the opening frame. Brothers Ben and Ethan Tobeler assisted on Mielcarz’s first goal.

“The takeaway from this is it proves to us that we can tell our kids, ‘You can play with anyone in this league,’” Falcons coach Tim Walsh said. “I said, ‘If we play that way for the rest of the year every game, we’re going to make the playoffs and we should win way more games than we thought we would.’”

Bishop was happy with the performance he got from his penalty-kill unit but displeased with what he considers stupid penalties his players took. The Cardinals went 3-for-4 on the penalty kill and did not have a power-play opportunity. 

Walsh said his power-play unit has been plagued with a tendency to break out slowly for the past three years. That slow approach during Schaaf’s five-minute boarding penalty took Bow out of its rhythm and shifted momentum in Bishop Guertin’s favor, he said.

“It’s five-on-five, we were skating with them, we were playing position, playing disciplined and we got the five-minute major ... that changed the game for us in a negative way,” Walsh said. “We just stopped skating at that point.”