Merrimack scores early, beats Goffstown in D2 boys hockey quarterfinal

MANCHESTER – The Merrimack High School boys hockey wanted to get off to a good start in Saturday’s Division II quarterfinal game against Goffstown.

Mission accomplished.

Josh Roy scored eight seconds into the game and the No. 1 Tomahawks cruised past the No. 8 Grizzlies 7-1 at West Side Arena. Merrimack will play in the semifinals on Wednesday at 7:30 p.m. against No. 4 Bow at the Rinks at Exeter.

Roy and Connor Powell (assist) each had two goals as Merrimack scored twice in the first three minutes of the game and added a third goal 36 seconds into the second period to take control.

Tyler Brewster, Dom Valuzzi and Mark Feeney also had a goal apiece and the ’Hawks erased the memory of last year’s quarterfinal upset at the hands of Spaulding.

“I thought our kids came out ready to go,” Merrimack coach Kurt Mithoefer said. “They were feeding off last year a little bit. We were harping all week in practice that the first one is important to get, and if you can get it in that first minute, you take everyone’s momentum out of the sails. We knew we wanted to come out and get one right off the bat. Eight seconds, you can’t get too much better than that.”

Although Roy wasn’t a part of the team that lost a year ago, he listened to his teammates talk about that disappointment all season and wanted to make sure it didn’t happen again.

“It was a big upset,” Roy said. “I was here as a resident of Merrimack, supporting my friends and family. We’ve talked about it that we don’t want it to happen again.

“Dom Valuzzi won (the opening faceoff) back to the defense and the defense got it up to Connor Powell and he got a nice drive wide on the first defenseman to give us kind of a two-on-one. He gave it right across to me in the slot and I shot it with the defenseman in front of me, using him as a screen, so the goalie didn’t get a good look at it.”

Brewster scored just a few minutes later and Valuzzi made it 3-0 early in the second, chasing Goffstown goalie Chase Gagne. Ben Genest kept Merrimack off the board for most of the period, but Powell scored with 3:30 left in the second to make it 4-0.

Goffstown’s Andrew Chretien scored early in the third period to cut the lead back to three, but the goal seemed to wake the ’Hawks up, as they scored three more times in a five-minute stretch to put the game away.

“We knew going into the third that we had to play our game,” Mithoefer said. “We weren’t going to sit back, we weren’t going to let them gain any kind of momentum, so we wanted to just keep going at them and we did.”