By Dean Geddes
I&M Staff Writer
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Photo by Nicole Harnishfeger
Nantucket's Bryce Eldridge takes a shot.
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It was pure pandemonium on the Whalers bench last Wednesday as the buzzer sounded, making official the club hockey team’s most impressive win of its inaugural season, an 8-5 road victory over the Martha’s Vineyard junior varsity team.
The win put Nantucket at 3-5 on the season, and the team is trying to schedule a make-up game at home against Cape Tech/Chatham on the weekend of March 11-13 for its final game of the season.
The Whalers and Vineyarders last met on Feb. 7, when Martha’s Vineyard broke the game open in the third period for a 5-1 win. The Vineyarders controlled the action for the entire game, outshooting the Whalers by a whopping 51-10 margin.
“It shows how far we have come and the progress we have made. The kids are on cloud nine right now,” head coach Graeden Ambrose said of last Wednesday’s win.
Nantucket’s disheartening 10-3 loss to Harwich earlier in the week in its first-ever game against all-varsity competition gave the Whalers some extra motivation in the rematch against Martha’s Vineyard.
“It kind of let us know what level we need to be at,” Ambrose said.
The Vineyarders jumped all over the Whalers at the start of the game and built a 2-0 lead nine minutes into the first period. But this time, the Whalers answered back.
Bryce Eldridge scored the Whalers’ first goal on assists from Harry Robishaw and Ethan Bell. Bell, who has been playing with a cracked rib for the second half of the season, has inspired his teammates with his dedication and hard work while playing through the injury, Ambrose said.
The Whalers scored again just minutes later when defenseman Danny Kurash fired a low wrist shot from the point that went through the legs of Martha’s Vineyard’s goalie.
“I keep telling them the best shot to take there is a low wrister, not a slap shot. I saw Danny start to wind up for a slap shot, and then settle and fire the wrister,” Ambrose said.
The two teams went into intermission tied at two goals a piece. In the second period it was all Nantucket.
Chris Ray’s goal early in the second period gave the Whalers their first lead of the game and later on in the period Robishaw scored on the power play to stretch the lead to two.
In the first game, the Whalers had a lot of trouble getting the puck out of their defensive zone on the power play, but this time Ambrose changed things around and had Gaven Norton waiting at the blue line, forcing the Vineyard defensemen to stay out of the Whalers’ zone to keep him from getting an easy breakaway. With their defensemen staying close to home, the Vineyarders couldn’t keep the puck bottled up in Nantucket’s end.
“The plan worked to a tee,” Ambrose said. “Since their defensemen had to worry about (Norton), we were able to get the puck into their zone twice on that power play.”
The second time in the zone, Robishaw took a pass from Norton and fired a pinpoint shot that went top-shelf as the Vineyard goalie went low, giving the Whalers a 4-2 lead after two periods.
The momentum swung right back in the third period, as Martha’s Vineyard came roaring back and scored a pair of goals to tie the game at four. The game stayed even until Robishaw fired a wrist shot over the shoulder of the Vineyard goalie that deflected off the top crossbar straight down and in.
Minutes later Eldridge gave the Whalers a two-goal lead again, when camped out in front of the net, he gathered a rebound and knocked it between the pipes.
Things got testy after Eldridge’s goal, with the Vineyarders looking to put a hard hit on every Whaler who touched the puck. With about three minutes left to play, a multi-player scrum broke out at center ice. During the confusion, the Vineyarders scored a goal that the referees counted, and three players – two Whalers, including goalie Ry Murphy, who was having a great game, and one Vineyarder – were ejected on game misconduct penalties. Nantucket was also assessed a double-major penalty for roughing and was forced to play the rest of the game short-handed, nursing a one-goal lead.
“Ry was playing out his mind,” Ambrose said. “It really hurt losing him there.”
Back-up goalie Joe Bopp filled in and turned away a flurry of Vineyard shots, freezing the puck each time and never allowing Martha’s Vineyard’s power-play unit to sustain any momentum.
The Vineyard then pulled its goalie, and with the puck in his defensive zone, Norton iced the puck right into the empty Vineyard net, putting the Whalers back up by two goals, 7-5.
The Whalers maintained the lead until Robishaw intercepted a pass across the point and skated in for the empty-net goal, his third of the game, that secured the Nantucket victory with less than 10 seconds left to play.
Reach Dean Geddes at sports@inkym.com
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