YARMOUTH — It took a while for York to find its scoring touch, but once the Wildcats found it they couldn’t stop scoring Wednesday night.
Spencer Pickett had two goals and an assist to lead York to a 6-1 victory against Yarmouth in a Class B South boys’ hockey game at Travis Roy Arena.
After a scoreless first period, the Wildcats, the reigning regional champions, came through with four goals in the second period to put the game out of the Clippers’ reach early.
“We’ve struggled on offense,” York Coach Jim Powers said. “We had a scrimmage a week ago, full-ice, and we scored zero goals. Last week against Biddeford we had zero goals and we didn’t score a goal in the first period here.”
Biddeford skated to a 3-0 win in the Wildcats’ opener Saturday night at Dover, New Hampshire.
“We went seven periods without scoring a goal,” Powers said. “I said we can’t have that. We just can’t have that and the kids responded.”
York started the second period with a power play that lasted nearly two minutes. The Wildcats didn’t score then but got off four shots, and that seemed to put them in the right frame of mind.
“I told them we had to finish,” Powers said. “We were playing all right, (but) we were not getting enough shots on net, and we had to finish our shots and go for rebounds.”
Mark Engholm opened the scoring 2:38 into the second on a shot from the right circle after a Yarmouth defender deflected the puck to Joey Graziano in the neutral zone to set up the breakout.
Five seconds later, Pickett made it 2-0 when he scored a short-handed goal.
At 6:36, Andrew Bertolini lifted in a shot from the slot and Jake Nelson made it 4-0 when he scored with less than five minutes left in the game.
“There was about a six-minute span in the second period where our defensive zone coverage really fell apart,” Yarmouth Coach David St. Pierre said. “We didn’t stay disciplined, and (York is) a team that has a lot of offense. They’re quick and they’ll expose you if you are not taking care of your responsibilities.”
From there it took the Clippers (0-1) quite a while to get untracked offensively. They didn’t take a shot on goal for the first five or six minutes of the third period.
“When you let up that many goals in that short a span it takes a little bit of time to recover,” St. Pierre said. “We came out in the third period and played a little bit. We took care of our zone coverage but we still have a lot of work to do.”
York moved into a 6-0 lead when Jacob Martin and Pickett scored less than five minutes into the third period.
With less than two minutes remaning, Kurt Heywood turned a feed from Cooper May into Yarmouth’s goal.
Keenan Gamache, York’s starting goalie, stopped each of the 13 shots he saw. With less than a minute left in the first period, Gamache, who was replaced with five minutes left in the first period, kept May, who was on a breakaway, from stuffing the puck into the right side of the goal.
“It’s tough for a goalie to sit there not seeing many shots to have to make a big save, but he’s a great athlete,” Powers said.
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