Oh, those early season woes.
Vineyarder boys varsity hockey Coach Matt Mincone knows he has a good team. But it’s one that hasn’t emerged, shown up as a unit, in the early going. The Martha’s Vineyard Regional High School (MVRHS) pucksters were 1-1 going into Wednesday afternoon’s road game against historically tough Attleboro High School.
MVRHS won its season opener, 1-0, against, an average Sandwich squad, in the opening round of the Jim Gormley Cup at Gallo Ice Arena in Bourne on Dec. 12. In the championship game on Saturday, the Vineyarders got their doors blown off,10-1, by Plymouth North, a strong team that won the Division 2 South Sectionals last year.
“Neither team deserved to win the Sandwich game. Very sloppy play. Our senior line, Logan Araujo, Colby Zarba, and Kenny Hatt, scored with 1:38 left. Then we gave up a breakaway on which they didn’t score. We did just enough to win,” Mincone said of his 22nd season opener behind the bench.
“I hope Saturday was an anomaly. Don’t get me wrong. Plymouth North is legit. They’re good. But we didn’t get anything going as a team. Everything we tried seemed to work out for them. I mean, we were down 2-0 with a good chance to score, missed the net, and back they came. Then we were down 4-1 in the second period; all of a sudden it’s 8-1,” he said. The lone Vineyarder goal went to Colby Zarba from Logan Araujo.
“Did I expect [10-1] to happen? Course not, but when you lose longtime leaders — Ian Trance [2019 grad] was a two-year captain, for example — it takes time to form a new team personality. If we lost 10-1 to someone in game 12 of the season, I’d be worried, but it’s too early to be negative. Life lessons for our team. I hope we play them again in our Fairleigh-Dickinson tournament.
“But I also think today’s game against Attleboro is the most important game of the season, not just because it’s the next game, but also because they always play us tough, and we need to show up and prove Saturday was an anomaly, and not our team,” he said.
After Attleboro, the Vineyarders host hockey juggernaut Hanover High at the MV Ice Arena, Saturday at 5 pm.
