Greely 5
Cape Elizabeth 0
The Cape Elizabeth hockey team was unable to get anything going in the offensive zone Monday night at Family Ice Center in Falmouth and as a result came up on the short end of a 5-0 score against rival Greely. The Rangers got five goals from five different scorers in a dominating performance.
“Greely beat us in a lot of one-on-one battles,” said Cape coach Jason Tremblay. “They beat us in the corners. We’re just not playing well right now.”
The Capers, who are enduring a stretch of eight games in 14 days including a weekend trip up to Houlton and Presque Isle, were held to just eight shots on goal through the first two periods.
In the game’s opening period, the Rangers got on the board right away. At 1:57 of the period, Leland Copenhagen found daylight in the five hole. The puck ricocheted off Cape goalie Lincoln Jordan’s left leg pad and across the goal line for a 1-0 Greely lead. The Rangers finished the first period with 15 shots, but just the one goal. The Capers, meanwhile, could manage just four shots against Greely’s Matt Labbe.
“We weren’t forechecking,” Tremblay said. “When we don’t forecheck or move our feet, it’s easy to play defense. It’s nothing they did different than they did the last time when we beat them. It’s nothing they’re doing that’s separating them from us.”
The second period was more of the same. Jordan faced a barrage of shots while Labbe remained relatively untested. Midway through the second, Kyle Selig launched a wrister at Jordan that eluded him and found the net on the top shelf to double the Greely lead.
The score remained 2-0 in favor of the home team until late in the second. With just 34.4 seconds before the second intermission, Tucker Geoffroy snuck the puck into the top corner of the goal. The goal gave Greely a commanding 3-0 lead heading into the third period.
In the third period, the Capers doubled their shot total with eight more shots. But Labbe turned them all away and finished with 16 saves for the shutout. Near the midpoint of the third period, the Rangers took a 4-0 lead when Brian Allyn shot toward the five hole and the puck trickled across the goal line.
The Rangers finished things off with their fifth goal of the night with just 47.5 seconds to play. This time Kevin Hart found Jesse Shavel in the slot for another goal through the five hole. The Rangers finished the night with 36 shots on goal. Jordan turned away 31 of them.
“We’re not playing well,” Tremblay said. “We need to start owning up and showing some character and stepping up. If we don’t wake up soon, we’ll be counting ourselves out. We are going to go back to work this week. We haven’t had a lot of practices. It’s been a rough stretch. We need to go back to square one and see what we can do.”
The Capers are scheduled to be in action again this Saturday when they take on Yarmouth.
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