Knights take down Littleton-Bromfield, 2-1
Lunenburg/Ayer Shirley moves to 2-0-1
» The one-two punch of center Nathan Handy and goaltender Ian Keene helped lift host Lunenburg/Ayer Shirley to a key 2-1 win over visiting Littleton/Bromfield at the Wallace Civic Center Wednesday evening.
Handy scored both Blue Knight goals to put him at six for the season following his hat trick against Leominster this past weekend, while Keene was like iron between the pipes for Lunenburg, recording 22 saves for the defending Central Mass. Division 3A champions.
In addition, Handy now sits at 98 career points.
The win lifts Lunenburg/Ayer Shirley to 2- 0-1 on the season, with a rematch against Leominster slated for Saturday afternoon here at the Civic Center. Wednesday’s triumph also marked head coach Eric Short’s 199th career victory.
Littleton, coached by former St. Bernard’s and Fitchburg State standout Kevin Lizotte, fell to 0-2 and will take on North Middlesex Regional here Monday afternoon.
Lunenburg had the edge early in this battle of finesse vs. power, as the Knights opened with a number of tries on Tigers goalie Aidan LeDuc (27 saves), but the hosts just couldn’t get the blade on the rebound.
“Both goaltenders played really, really well,” Lizotte said. “We had some really good opportunities, and we did a good job of
keeping (Lunenburg) to the outside in the first period. I thought we had some really good chances toward the end of the game; (Keene) kept pucks out.
“We’re a team that’s not going to score a ton of goals, similar to last year; we’ll be defensive-minded first, and we really preach two-way hockey. We just have to find a way to put some pucks in the net, which will come.”
But with Kyle Tracey putting Littleton up 1-nil on a nice wrister from the top of the slot glove side, the Tigers worked on flipping the script by applying pressure on Keene, including a shot from the
point — and through traffic — that Keene kicked aside.
“The goal was a terrific shot by (Tracey),” Short said. “Ian definitely held us in tonight. (Littleton) had a lot of quality chances, especially at the end. He was solid.
“We knew it was going to be a tough night; we were a little thin tonight, we shortened the bench to get through it. We dug deep and held on.”
Handy pulled Lunenburg level just over five minutes later, as Tristen Gallant won a scrum at the dot and poked the puck loose. Handy grabbed it and skated up the left, tucked in through the slot and beat LeDuc through the five-hole to make it a 1-1 game.
It stayed that way through the end of the first half.
Ten minutes into the second,
Handy struck again.
This time it came off a face off, where he grabbed the loose puck and skated up the right-hand side and squeezed the puck in on the short side.
“We said before the game, Littleton is a young team, they have a lot of energy and they work hard,” Short said. “We just had to play good defensive hockey, and kids like Nathan would step up and put pucks in the net.”
Littleton had a number of chances to equalize in the last four minutes, but Keene got low and thwarted the Tigers, including a neat try at point blank range by Derek Peterson from Aaron King.
“A lot of our shots were in good scoring areas,” Lizotte explained. “We were much improved in transition and scoring areas.”