Belchertown Edges Mount Everett Icers

SHEFFIELD, Mass. -- After watching his team drop to 0-5 with a 1-0 loss to Belchertown, Mount Everett hockey coach Aidan Gilligan was looking past the scoreboard and toward the improvement that he saw on the ice Wednesday afternoon at the Berkshire School.

 

“This was our most complete game of the season,” Gilligan said. “We changed some things up. We rolled three lines the whole game. And I think that helped us quite a bit where we had some fresh legs in the third period.

 

“We’ve just got to get hungry in front of the net. We had some chances. I thought Jack [Seward-Dailey] played well in net, and our defense played well.”

 

Seward-Dailey made 28 saves in the loss, but Belchertown keeper Ethan Rajpold matched him save-for-save and earned the shutout.

 

The game’s only goal came at the 35 minute, 2 second mark when Belchertown’s Matthew Pacheco converted on a 2-on-1 break.

 

Other than that, Seward-Dailey and his defense, which blocked numerous Belchertown shots, did the rest, shaving three goals off Mount Everett’s previous season-low for goals allowed this winter.

 

“It was a good, selfless effort by the whole team, I thought, which is what we needed,” Gilligan said. “I think Jack kept us in the game. He fought hard. He did a good job with rebound control, for the most part, which is a key factor any time you play - taking away second-chance opportunities.

 

“He had a very good game.”

 

And despite being outshot in the third period, the Eagles generated three strong scoring chances: breakaways by Kyle Benzie, Caleb Kollmer and Aidan Engel that each ended in saves by Rajpold.

 

Mount Everett’s biggest issue on Wednesday may have been its power play.

 

The Eagles were awarded five full man-up advantages and one, with 33 seconds left in the third, that allowed Gilligan to pull Seward-Dailey for an extra skater. But the 0-for-6 day on the power play ensured that Pacheco’s goal stood up.

 

“The power play hurts,” Gilligan said. “We’ve got to change things up, and that’s on us as coaches to rework what we’ve been doing on the power play and try to go back to drawing board.

 

“We definitely have our opportunities there. We just didn’t capitalize on them.”

 

Mount Everett goes to the Mullins Center at the University of Massachusetts on Saturday for a Wright Division rematch against the Orioles.