Agawam Icers Top Taconic
PITTSFIELD, Mass. – Five different players scored a goal apiece Wednesday as the Agawam hockey team handed Taconic a 5-1 loss at the Boys and Girls Club.
Agawam overcame a 41-save performance from the Thunder’s Cam LaFerriere and scored twice on the power play on the way to avenging a 4-1 mid-December loss to Taconic.
“Effort,” Taconic coach Matt Risley said when asked to compare the two meetings. “We had better effort, better execution in the first game, and we didn’t really have much effort and execution out there tonight.
“We’ve had a layoff for a while. But we just came out flat. Couldn’t get back into it, and they took it to us.”
Playing its first game since Dec. 30, the Thunder (2-5-1) gave up 21 shots on goal in the first period.
The only player to light the lamp was Agawam’s Landon Ashford, who tipped home a shot from the point in the 12th minute to give his team a 1-0 lead.
LaFerriere was a wall the rest of the period, including on a 45-second 4-on-3 opportunity midway through the stanza, during which he stopped three shots.
“Cam kept us in it.” Risley said. “Cam did a good job. We’ve got to do a better job of creating some offense and playing together as a team.”
Drew Scherban scored five minutes into the second period to double Agawam’s lead, and Evan Connery scored a power play goal on a scramble in front of the net to put Taconic down by three goals late in the period.
Casey Thomas and A.J. Robbins each added an insurance goal in the third to make it a five-goal deficit with 7 minutes, 18 seconds left to play.
Taconic got on the board with just more than a minute left to play on a 5-on-3 opportunity when Brayden Bishop tipped in Ray Lynch’s shot from the point.
It marked Taconic’s only conversion on the eight full or partial power plays it accumulated in the game.
“Execution, sloppiness, that’s all,” Risley said of Taconic’s lack of success on special teams. “We got kind of stagnant, sitting still instead of moving the puck around.
“But, like I said, we’ve a layoff. Hopefully, this was a little bit of a wake-up, and we’ll get back after it.”
Taconic is on the road on Monday when it travels to Fitzpatrick Rink in Holyoke to take on Chicopee.