LOWELL — While the defense showed up Tuesday night at the Tsongas Center, the North Andover offense was missing in action.
Minus one-third of its top skating line, eighth-seeded North Andover managed only five shots on goal in its Division 2 North Regional semifinal Tuesday night as No. 13 seed Boston Latin took advantage of the power outage to claim a 2-0 victory Tuesday night.
“We picked a bad night not to play our best game,” North Andover coach Peter Marfione said. “We were missing (senior captain) Tyler (Buonopane) tonight, but Boston Latin played better than us. They took away our offense. They limited us to under 10 shots, and you’re not going to win a game with that.
Buonopane, who is second on the team with 18 goals and 37 points, suffered a concussion in a 5-2 win over top-seeded Danvers in Friday’s quarterfinal.
North Andover (14-8-2) defeated Boston Latin (13-7-3) twice in the regular season by a combined 8-1 and had piled up 12 goals in two regional victories. But the Knights managed only one shot on net the first 12 minutes. Two of their five shots were in an eight-second span late in the first period
“We just didn’t seem to get anything going. We’ve scored (12) goals the last two games, but we just didn’t get anything going tonight. We just didn’t have it offensively.”
Even though most of the match was spent in the Knight defensive zone, Jack Walsh kept the Wolfpack in check most of the match, surviving an early first-period penalty. The junior gave up a goal midway through the second on a Nick O’Connell one-timer blasted from between the circles.
But that was the only shot that got past Walsh, as the Wolfpack added an empty-netter with 33.6 seconds remaining.
Maintaining form, the Knights were held to only one shot in the crucial third period, while Latin piled up 11 more, including three on another power-play chance that Walsh thwarted.
“It was frustrating but not as frustrating as I thought it would be,” said Walsh, who stopped 23 shots. “It wasn’t anything the team was doing. I know the effort was there. It was just that the puck wasn’t bounding our way, but that’s the stuff you have to deal with.”
