Raiders Girls' Hockey Team Shut Out by Woburn

No matter what the sport, you always want to be playing your best as you head into the playoffs.

On Saturday, the /Watertown girls hockey team found out they need to play a bit better if they want to make a run in this year’s state tournament.

After losing to top-five ranked Lexington earlier this week 5-3, the Raiders fell to possibly the best team in the state, Woburn, 3-0 at Ryan Arena.

After having lost just one game in their previous 15, they now sit at 9-3-5 with five games remaining.

Raiders coach Steve Russo said despite the losses, it is nice to see where his girls are at in relation to some of the powerhouses in the state.

“You never like a loss obviously … but I like the way we’ve played against two extremely good teams," he said. “I thought our effort was good … we really struggled on the power play, but we hung with them, and it’s good to see where we’re at heading down the stretch here.”

It was a long day from the start for the Raiders. Just two minutes in, they were forced to go on the penalty kill. After several blocked shots and nice saves from goalie Simone Bailey to thwart the power play, Woburn got a bit of a break.

After a failed clear attempt by Melrose/Watertown, the Tanners' Siobhan Duran took a feed just inside the blue line from Kayla Smith, and let s soft wrist shot go that somehow found it’s way past the left pad of Bailey.

The Raiders missed a golden opportunity minutes later after Woburn’s Maura O’Brien was called for a five-minute boarding major penalty.

Watertown could barley keep possession of the puck as the Tanner’s defense smothered them at the blue line. The Raiders wouldn’t record their first shot on net until just 5:34 remained in the first period.

The two teams went to the dressing room with the score still 1-0 after the first.

The Tanners found the back of the cage for the only goal of a very quick second period. After several nice saves from Woburn goalie Courtney Davis, the Tanners continued their beautiful display of cycling and puck possession, which resulted in a shot from the point from Hannah Magee that snuck its way through the five hole of Bailey, making it 2-0 with 7:03 left in the period.

Bailey was forced to make some terrific saves, keeping her team in the game late in the frame, and helped keep the Raiders stay down 2-0 with 15 minutes of hockey left to play.

Melrose/Watertown produced a much better effort in the third period, but just couldn’t muster much of an attack against Davis. It was a rare occurrence if any Tanner missed an assignment and allowed a Raider to walk into the zone with the puck.

Woburn capped the scoring with 10:52 to play in the game after a scrum in front of Bailey led to a rebound goal off the stick of Bryanna Harron.

Despite the lack of offensive punch from the usual goal savvy Raiders team, Russo didn’t seemed too worried about the back-to-back losses his girls were now facing.

“We’ll be okay," he said. “We just ran into probably one of the best teams in the state. The reason we didn’t have much offense is because they made it difficult.

"Our power play didn’t help us out much today … but we just have to tip our hats to Woburn and move on. Their best players work harder than the player they have further down on their roster … and that’s a testament to them. That’s a solid hockey team we just lost to; we can’t really hang our heads about this one.”