Padelford Notches 200th Point in Win over South Hadley

DALTON, Mass. – Reaching a major individual milestone was just another night at the office for Wahconah junior Rylan Padelford.

 

Padelford scored nine goals and set up two more to hit 200 points for his career in a 19-10 win over South Hadley.

 

“I was 10 points away [coming in], and I was not really focusing on that,” Padelford said. “I was trying to win the game and focus on that.

 

“I did know I was 10 away, but I didn’t know I was going to score 10 in that game.”

 

Wahconah coach Joe O’Neill was not surprised to see Padelford reach the milestone.

 

“Rylan has always been a great player, and he really has been since the day he stepped on the field here,” O’Neill said. “We just are relying more on him this year than we have, obviously, in the past. 

 

“And he’s stepped up and filled the role. He’s been really mature about it. He and I communicate all the time, and he’s kind of my guy that understands a lot of the stuff that I’m trying to do and communicates it well to the team.”

 

Padelford got things going early with four goals in the first quarter, including a tying goal in the fourth minute after the Tigers got a tally from Charlie Anischik (three goals) in the second minute of play.

 

Devin Lagerwall scored with an overhand bounce shot to give Wahconah a lead it never relinquished at 2-1.

 

Padelford then scored three straight – his first of two natural hat tricks on the night – to make it a four-goal margin, and that is where it stood going into the second quarter.

 

That quarter ended up being South Hadley’s most productive, as it cut scored five times and went into the break down by just three, 10-7.

 

O’Neill said that his team had some things to work on heading to the third.

 

“In the second quarter, we were communicating the wrong way,” he said. “We were not talking to each other and communicating. So we fixed that at half-time.

 

“Defense, for the most part, is simple but complex. The most basic part is you need to talk to each other. If you lose that communication, then you get what we had in the second quarter.”

 

South Hadley scored the first goal of the second half to get within two, but Wahconah answered 28 seconds later when Luciano Canino converted an assist from Jon Howard to start a 6-0 run.

 

Canino scored again to make it 12-8, Padelford scored three straight, and Lagerwall scored again to make it an eight-goal margin with 3:09 left in the third.

 

Wahconah was up, 16-10, going to the fourth and slowed things down in the final 12 minutes, getting a goal and an assist from Padelford and two Jacob Thomas goals down the stretch to ice it.

 

Bryce Smith stopped seven shots to earn the win in goal for Wahconah (8-1), which takes a seven-game winning streak into Wednesday’s game at Amherst.

 

Photos from this game here.