Sports
Doherty, Redmen Explode, Blast Beverly 6-1, to Reach Final
TMHS hockey team advances to the Division 2 North Sectional final.
Tewksbury High sharp shooter picked the perfect time to break out of his mini scoring slump Tuesday night as TMHS's senior captain exploded for a three-goal hat trick and led the Redmen to a more than convincing, 6-1 state tournament win over Beverly in front of a packed house at the Chelmsford Forum.
With the win, Tewksbury advances to the Division 2 North Sectional finals against Saugus on Friday evening in Chelmsford.
For most, a run of three games without scoring a goal would go unnoticed. But for Doherty, the team's leading scorer and the Merrimack Valley Conference/Dual County League Division 2 Player of the Year, getting shut out in any three-game stretch is unusual. And going scoreless in the team's final regular season game and first two state tournament games was starting to gnaw at the team's top gun.
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"It was on my mind a little bit," admitted Doherty outside a raucous Tewksbury locker room after the game. "I knew I hadn't been producing the way I want to, but our line was scoring and we were winning, so I wasn't too worried."
Doherty shall worry no more as he scored twice in a two-minute stretch in the second period to break open a 2-1 game. He added his third goal as the exclaimation point of a three-goal Tewksbury advantage in the third period, much to the delight of the Tewksbury High fans, who littered the ice with hats after Doherty's third goal.
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"It felt great to break out of it," Doherty said. "Especially when everybody started throwing hats on the ice."
Senior defenseman Sean Taylor got Tewksbury on the board first when he beat Beverly netminder Tony Walsh with a with a wrist shot after a thrilling rush straight up the middle of the ice. Doherty made it 2-0 on an unassisted goal that featured a nifty move in the Beverly zone midway through the second period.
The seventh-seeded Panthers, who had advanced to this sectional semi-final game by upsetting second-seeded Winthrop, 5-4 on Saturday, finally squeezed a goal past Tewksbury keeper Niko Cunha with 3:53 left in the second period, but that only served to further awaken the sleeping giant.
Doherty, who is now closing in on the 50-point mark (26 goals, 22 assists) this season, scored a short-handed goal on a perfect pass from sophomore forward Derek Petti just over a minute after the Beverly goal.
"That was huge," said Tewksbury coach Derek Doherty. "They cut the lead to one and then they go on the power-play. If they score they're right back in it, but we scored short-handed. That was huge."
And if Doherty's second goal didn't totally deflate the Panthers, Derek Petti's unassisted goal just 36 seconds into the third period certainly did. With a Beverly player in the penalty box for elbowing, Petti stole a clearing pass at the top of the circle and walked in and scored just six seconds into the power play, to make it 4-1.
From there, it was just a matter of how many goals Tewksbury would win by. Senior forward Frank Mazzei made it 5-1 when he converted the rebound of a Rob Pruyne slap shot with 4:01 to play, and Doherty completed his hat trick with another unassisted goal at the 11:38 mark of the final period.
Tewksbury dominated in all areas, outshooting Beverly by an unofficial margin of 37-29, and out-hitting the Panthers all over the ice.
"That was our game plan," Derek Doherty said. "We wanted to come out and play physical. That's been our game plan for the last three games. We've come out and set the tone early and it's worked out for us."
Tewksbury's defense was once again stellar, as only one bouncing puck got past Cunha and the Redmen defenders.
"He (Cunha) came up big for us," Doherty said. "He had some huge saves."
The win earns Tewksbury a date with the tournament's No. 4 seed, Saugus High, which upset top-seeded Wilmington by a surprising 5-1 margin on Tuesday. Face-off is scheduled for 5:10 p.m. Friday at the Chelmsford Forum.
"We're gonna have our work cut out for us," Derek Doherty said. "That's a tough Wilmington team they (Saugus) beat tonight."
It will be Tewksbury's second trip to the sectional chamopionship game in the past four years. The Redmen lost to Wilmington in a shootout in the 2008 Division 2 North Sectional finals.
Because there are no Division 2 hockey pairings in Central and Western Massachusetts, Friday night's game will serve as the Division 2 state tournament semi-finals. The winner will face the South Sectional champion next week with the state championship on the line. Tewksbury last won a Division 2 state championship in 1996.
But both Doherty's like their team's chances if the Redmen continue to play aggressive, physical hockey.
"Everyone wants it," Ryan Doherty said. "This team has more heart than any other team I've ever played on. We come out every night and just want it.
"I think we're (playing) at our best right now," he added. "As long as we continue to come out and play hard we can stay at our best."
"We just need to play the same way we've played these last three games," Derek Doherty said. "We need to play physical and we need to shut them down in the neutral zone. We've got our hands full, but we're playing well right now."
