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Beverly can't slow down Fishermen

Wednesday, January, 09 By Phil Stacey
Sports editor

SALEM | Bob Gilligan stepped out of the Beverly High hockey team's locker room in the bowels of the Rockett Arena after his postgame address to his club and reached for the game scoresheet.

"Let's take a look at the damage," Gilligan sighed. For the second time in a two-week span, Gilligan's Panthers didn't have any answers for a very talented Gloucester team.

The Fishermen controlled the tempo from the onset and attacked the Beverly net with fervor, resulting in a 5-2 triumph between these age-old Northeastern Conference rivals.

"They went to the net hard ... and we didn't knock them down," said Gilligan, his team now 5-3-2 at the halfway point of the regular season. "You can't give a team that talented that much room to operate in the offensive zone. And when we had the puck, we didn't generate enough shots."

The Panthers were victimized by Jeremy Fanning, who notched his first career hat trick for the Fishermen. The second line center popped home a goal each period, with his final score, coming off of a pretty drop pass out front from linemate Brett Biondo (2 assists) with 3:24 to play, sealing the win.

"We had some trouble at first with their trap, so we started skating the puck out and that worked for us," said Fanning, who has a NEC-high 13 goals thus far. "We wanted to keep the puck in Beverly's zone as much as possible and let them make mistakes."

Playing primarily two forward lines, two defensemen (minute munchers Nick DeCoste and Paul Russo) and riding the strong play of Bradley Robertson in goal, Gloucester (8-0-1) rolled to its eighth straight win by keeping things simple: clearing the zone, keeping their skates (and the puck) moving and playing smart hockey.

The Fishermen were able to break Beverly's trap early on, skating the puck out of their zone and creating chances offensively. Eventually, the hosts were forced to abandon their 2-man forecheck and return to their more traditional 1-man approach.

"They outplayed us," said Beverly captain Chris Bushey, who scored his team's first goal last night. "We played well at times, but not for a long enough period of time. When Gloucester takes the lead, they really don't give you a chance to get back into it."

Not that Beverly didn't try.

After falling behind by two goals after one period | starting goaltender Tony Walsh, who was sick all day, took himself out and was replaced by sophomore C.J. Cacciatore (15 saves) the rest of the way | the Panthers saw that deficit swell to 3-0 as Fanning scored his second goal just 1:37 into the middle stanza.

But Bushey got his team on the board a minute-and-a-half later, picking up the rebound from Ryan Karp's slapshot and beating Robertson far post. Freshman defenseman Mitch Hamor also picked up an assist on the play.

Beverly carried the play over the next 4-5 minutes, but couldn't find a way to dent the Gloucester goal again. In fact, Fisherman third liner Marc Buotte scored perhaps the game's most important goal, a backhanded rebound that beat Cacciatore high to give Gloucester a 4-1 lead.

Although Beverly responded with a goal from its own third line before the period ended as Ty Albano took a pass from center Tom Berube and knocked it home, the Panthers were still faced with an uphill battle heading into the third period. Gloucester put the clamps down defensively over the final 15 minutes, allowing just three shots.

"We didn't get the number of shots we needed," added Beverly captain Mike Boches, an 18-year-old who carries a 4.3 grade-point average and has already been accepted early decision at Bucknell University.

"Gloucester doesn't do anything fancy; they just work hard and keep coming at you. We need to play better in our own end and get more shots on net."

Beverly, which got strong efforts up front from second line right wing Chris Freni and Berube, gets that chance Saturday, taking on Revere back at the Rockett Arena (6 p.m.).