AMHERST — The Greenfield hockey team handed Belchertown its first Wright League loss and prevented the Orioles from clinching a league title with a 4-2 victory, Friday afternoon at the Mullins Center Practice Rink.
Belchertown (11-2-2, 7-1-1) has a one-point lead on the Green Wave (14-2-2, 6-1-2). Each team has one league game remaining. Easthampton (10-7-1, 5-2-1) is also in the hunt with two league games left.
“All in all, we put ourselves in a good position to compete for the league title the rest of the way,” Belchertown coach Matt Crutch said. “The rest of the way we just have to take it one game at a time, but I really like this team, they work hard, our practices have been great, our coaches have been committed, everything has just been great.”
It didn’t take long for Greenfield to put the Orioles down as Robert Harris scored in the opening 90 seconds of the first period. Moments later Greenfield added on to its lead as Kyle Barnes received a pass in the neutral zone from Jacob Bryant and showed off his speed, taking it all the way to the Belchertown net for a 2-0 lead.
With 9:31 to go in the first period, Belchertown’s potent power play had its first chance to dig into Greenfield’s two-goal lead, but it came up empty handed as Greenfield goalie Riley Drew stood strong through the first eight shots he faced.
Greenfield got its first crack at the power play early in the second period. However, Orioles goalie Ethan Rajpold stopped all three shots he faced on the power play to keep the deficit at 2-0.
Francis Nigro got Belchertown on the board with 9:20 to go in the second period. Nigro stuffed a rebound in front of the net past Drew to make it 2-1.
But in the closing minute of the second period, Bryant snuck a one-timer from the point past Rajpold to regain the two-goal lead at 3-1.
The Orioles knew they needed to make adjustments entering the third period.
“We’re one of the more physical teams in the league and we weren’t showing that in the first two periods,” Crutch said. “The third period we started to bring it a little bit and play our better hockey.”
That physicality led to Vaughn Gillen’s goal with 10:55 to go in the game. After some hard hits deep in the offensive zone, Gillen took a loose puck in front of the net and back-handed a shot past Drew to cut the lead to one.
Greenfield struck again with 5:30 to go in the closing period. Jacob Croteau caught a cross-ice pass at the Belchertown blue line and dished it to Douglas Hanieski, who set up Bryan Baumann with the quick wrist shot to bring the lead back to two.
Despite several offensive zone faceoffs for Belchertown in the final two minutes and an extra skater due to the empty net, the Orioles could not overcome the two-goal lead.