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Fulford carries Fishermen on his back past Falcons

Saturday, January, 26 By Phil Stacey
Sports editor

It was just about the best compliment an opposing coach could have ever given Andrew Fulford.

The heart and soul of the Gloucester High hockey team, who had been struggling to find the back of the net this season, had just scored twice to lead his Fishermen to a 3-1 victory over their arch rivals from Danvers in another classic at The Tank.

Danvers head coach Kevin Brown | a heart-and-soul guy himself when he captained the Falcons during the 1992-93 season | was asked to describe Fulford's performance afterwards.

"He's a bulldog, one of those big-game players who shows up best in the big games," Brown said. "He's the type of player I love to watch because he goes hard all the time, every shift. When the stakes are highest, he raises his game and plays his best."

Appraised of Brown's comments a few moments later, Fulford seemed genuinely shocked at first | then let the magnitude of it sink in.

"It's always special when you hear an opposing coach compliment you, especially someone like Coach Brown," said Fulford, who scored his fourth and fifth goals of the season Saturday night. "That means a lot to me. I put a lot of pressure on myself to do well and help our team in any way that I can, and when that's recognized it's great to hear. "I try to lead by example on the ice. I haven't been getting many goals, but I feel like I've been doing the dirty work in the corners and freeing other guys up (for scoring opportunities). Tonight just happened to be my night."

In an evenly played game where the pucks | and hits | were flying on both ends, Gloucester (10-1-1) made Fulford's second goal (a power play tally in the final minute of the first period) stand up with solid forechecking and a commitment to getting back defensively in their own end.

It wasn't for lack of effort that Danvers wasn't able to beat Gloucester netminder Bradley Robertson (21 saves) more than once. The Falcons repeatedly tried to attack Robertson in his own zone by coming into the zone hard, shooting and hoping for big rebounds. But those they did get were turned away by the netminder, and many others were simply cleared away by the Fishermen defense of Nick DeCoste, Paul Russo and sophomore Brett Cahill | the last of whom skated a regular shift to relieve some of the pressure off of the other two.

"I thought we played really well in the second and third periods," said Brown, his team now 6-4-3. "But I have to give a lot of credit to their defense by keeping us off the scoreboard (after the first period). And their goaltender responded well after their loss to Peabody (7-1) last week. "Certainly, we're disappointed | especially our seniors, this being our last game here. But as I told them, we left it all on the ice. They can be proud of the way they played."

Don Lowe, the Gloucester head coach, was also proud of his team, not only for officially qualifying for the Division 2 North state tournament with the victory, but also for their ability to learn from the mistakes made a week ago in the home loss to Peabody.

"The entire team picked it up," said Lowe. "We didn't run any extra sprints or anything (in the aftermath of the Peabody loss), but we had a film session and went over all the little things that went wrong. All we wanted to do was concentrate on getting better | and tonight that showed."

Playing on the ice surface named after his late grandmother, Dorothy Talbot, Fulford was, as usual, more to the point. "Something like last Saturday never should have happened here. We disrespected our home rink," said the senior captain. "That wounded us. We didn't even call this place 'The Tank' all week leading up to the game; we had to earn that right back with our play tonight." Fulford's first tally, coming 4:05 into the game, was a goal-scorer's goal. He came down the right wing boards, bore in on Danvers senior captain Pat O'Kane (23 saves, several of them, as usual, were spectacular) and beat high to the far side. Danvers, which was outshot 15-5 in the first period, caught a break when second line left wing Jay Sabino's attempted clear-in hit a Gloucester defenseman in the leg and ricocheted past Robertson to knot things up at 1-1.

But a penalty to Falcons' defenseman Tim Wilkinson put Gloucester on the power play in the final minute of the frame, and Fulford responded by jamming home a Jeremy Fanning rebound out front.

It stayed a one-goal game until there were just under five minutes to play when Marc Buotte took O'Kane wide to the goalie's right and flicked a shot past him far side.

Brown, who was happy with the play of sophomore third liners D.J. Yost and wings Chris Kontos and John McInnis, was pleased with everything except the end result.

"The effort was there for us," said Brown, whose team hosts Revere Wednesday at Salem State. "We just couldn't get any pucks past (Robertson)."