Cards suffer second straight shutout loss

TYNGSBORO – Clint Edinger thought his Bishop Brady High School boys hockey team had a chance to beat Bishop Guertin.

But to do so, the Giants’ coach knew his team was going to have to play well in its own end to support the goals he thought it could score.

Bishop Brady did both, putting five pucks behind Bishop Guertin goalies and keeping the Cardinals off the scoreboard in a 5-0 win at Skate 3 Saturday afternoon. The shutout loss was the second straight for Bishop Guertin, coming on the heels of two wins in which the Cardinals scored a combined 18 goals.

The big difference?

“That tells me all you guys who told us how good we were in the beginning don’t know what you’re talking about,” Bishop Guertin coach Gary Bishop said. “We were 8-0 and the only team we beat with a winning record was Trinity and everybody is telling us how wonderfully we are. We’ve now played teams who are 7-2 and 8-1 and lost by a combined 7-0.”

The Cardinals dropped their first Division I game of the season to Exeter on Wednesday, 2-0, and in both games, Bishop Guertin didn’t do the things need against a good goaltender.

“We’re playing against two of the better goaltenders in the state the last two games,” Bishop said. “You’ve got to do different things to beat people like that. You’ve got to move laterally, you’ve got to get rebounds, you’ve got to get tips. We didn’t.”

What made a bad day worse for the Cardinals was what Bishop called the first subpar game of the season for goalie Andrew Pearson, who was pulled in the second period after allowing Bishop Brady’s fourth goal on 13 shots.

Brady Gut and Paul Pirozzo each had a goal and an assist for the Giants, who scored three times in the second period, the final two just 40 seconds apart, for a 4-0 lead.

But even that didn’t feel like enough for Edinger.

“Even when it was 4-0, there was still way too much time,” he said. “After hearing (Exeter goaltender) Nolan Daley wins a game for them over there, I kinda thought we have a good shot at them. We’re a team averaging almost five goals a game.

“I thought today would be good, but you get nervous playing a team like Guertin, coming off a loss. They scored 18 goals in two games. Obviously up front they’ve got some power. We stressed the importance of without the puck today. We’re going to score goals, whether it’s one, two, three … I didn’t think we’d score five.”

Bishop Brady got its first goal with 4:25 left in the first period, when Patrick Hadley beat Pearson.

But the goal that stole momentum for the Giants came with 4:21 left in the second period. With Bishop Guertin on the power play, Nate Philbrick found the puck near his blue line with no Cardinals between him and Pearson. Philbrick went to the goalie’s right and slid the puck just past Pearson’s foot and into the net.

The Cardinals forced play into the Giants’ end for much of the third period, but Bishop Guertin couldn’t find an answer to goalie Sam Daley. Bishop Brady’s Connor Gillian added a fifth goal with two minutes left in the game.

“I’d be more worried if we weren’t getting opportunities,” Bishop said of the two shutouts. “Goals are cyclical. You can into a situation where a bounce goes your way. Against Exeter, we could have had five goals easily and didn’t. We’re getting opportunities, we’re just not finishing.”

Bishop Guertin goes outside the division on Monday to face Malden Catholic and returns home to take on Exeter on Wednesday.