GREENFIELD — Things weren’t looking good for the Greenfield hockey team for nearly two full periods of action Saturday night against South Hadley.
The visiting Tigers scored two goals in the first two minutes of the game and tallied another in the second to go up 3-0. The Green Wave rallied however, finding the back of the net with five ticks left on the clock in the second period as Derek Lenois put home a rebound off a shot by Jacob Bryant to make it 3-1 going into the final 15 minutes of action.
Greenfield rode the wave of confidence from the late goal into the third, tallying two more times in the final stanza of play to force a 3-3 come-from-behind tie at Collins-Moylan Arena.
“It was a good comeback,” Green Wave coach Adam Bouchard said. “After the first two periods, the team knew we weren’t playing the way we want to be playing. We changed things up and that’s what’s amazing about this sport. Until we reined it in and figured out what we needed to do, it was a little scary for a while. Burying that goal with five seconds left in the period really gave us the momentum moving forward for the final 15 (minutes).”
The shift in momentum was evident, as it took Greenfield just 31 seconds to light up the scoreboard in the third period. Bryant glided behind the net, looked for a wrap-around which was stopped, but Kyle Barnes swooped in and tapped the rebound home to bring the Wave within 3-2.
“We worked hard,” Lenois said. “We had to get one fast so that’s how we got the comeback going. The goalie stopped flashing his glove and he realized we could score. It was good we showed the young guys we can come back.”
The Green Wave kept the pressure on South Hadley goalie Anthony Cigal — who finished the game with a whopping 40 saves — but the avalanche of Greenfield shots eventually paid off with 6:47 to play.
MJ Paulin fired a shot in from the point which was saved by Cigal, but once again Barnes was there in front of the net to put home the rebound and even the score at 3-3.
During the first three games of the season, the Green Wave didn’t have to face much adversity, winning each contest by multiple goals. Bouchard was pleased with the way his team rallied back to force the tie.
“Facing adversity is one of the things we work on everyday at practice and talk about during all our virtual practices,” Bouchard said. “This sport, it gives you a ton of different aspects every time you touch the ice. One of the big things from our state championship run last year was that adversity and how we come out of it and how we build and grow from it. During a short season like we have this year, this is going to be a learning point we have to look back on moving forward.”
After tying the game up, Greenfield was forced to hang on late. A penalty put the Tigers on the power-play with 3:49 to play, and the Wave picked up a second minor during the stretch, forcing them to kill off a 5-on-3 for one minute.
As it has all season long thus far, the Greenfield penalty kill came up big, thanks to a few big saves from Joshua Bordeaux in net, who stopped 18 shots in the game.
“I didn’t want to lose the game for us,” Bordeaux said of shutting down the late power-play. “I took responsibility for the first couple of goals and I didn’t want to mess up the comeback for the boys.”
Matt Brunelle kicked off the scoring for South Hadley, putting home a goal just 1:18 into the game off an assist from Thenis Tsilibocos.
Just 20 seconds later, Tsilibocos put home a rebound off a shot from Brunelle to put the Tigers up 2-0 before either team was able to settle into the game.
Bouchard credited the leaders on his team team for not allowing the Wave to fall apart after the rough start.
“It’s extremely difficult,” Bouchard said of giving up early goals. “The players were really down after that. I give a lot of credit to our captains and the seniors on our team for not allowing the internal bickering or being angry with each other. That’s not what we do. If you saw the bench, there was nothing but picking each other up. Mistakes happen, we learn from those mistakes and the seniors and captains didn’t let us get down. We could have thrown our hat in and said it’s going to be one of those games. It took us a little to get it back together but a lot of good things that came from those leaders.”
Nate Loughman scored the third South Hadley goal, doing so 1:56 into the second period to give the visitors a 3-0 lead at the time.