Power Outage: Wilmington Hockey Team Zapped From Playoffs by Saugus

boys hockey coach Steve Scanlon hoped his team could catch lightning in a bottle in the North Division 2 postseason. Instead, the Wildcats were simply shocked.

Scanlon’s charges played their strongest week of the season in the final days of the regular season, and the mentor expected to continue that performance into the playoffs.

The plan worked to an extent with postseason wins over Danvers and Masconomet, but on Tuesday night the team’s season concluded with a 5-1 defeat at the hands of No. 4 seeded Sachems at Chelmsford Forum.

“We just had a bad night on a night when you can’t afford to have one,” said Scalon. “When you stop playing your system and do it individually, that doesn’t work. We weren’t disciplined enough. Kids were desperate I think and trying to get a spark somewhere. It just didn’t come.”

Saugus dominated from the time the puck dropped on the opening faceoff. About a minute in, Saugus snagged a 1-0 lead. Then, just over a minute later, the Sachems extended their edge to 2-0. By the 6:46 mark of the opening stanza, Saugus had built a 3-0 lead.

Freshman Cody McGowan appeared to jolt life into the listless Wildcats. He scored on an open-net rebound with 5:23 and Wilmington hoped to chip away at the deficit.

But with 7:03 to play in the middle period, Saugus capitalized on a sloppy Wildcat clear. Several Wilmington defenders struggled to get the puck out of the defensive zone, though there was no pressure from the Sachems.

The puck ended up in front of goalie Joseph Aucoin, and a Saugus attacker pounced on it and put the game away. The fifth and final tally came with 2:14 to play in the second.

“If you give goals up rapid fire, it’s awful tough to come back from. We weren’t ready to go,” said Scanlon. “I don’t want to take anything away from them, but that was as bad as we have played all year.”

Scanlon said it was a difficult decision, but he pulled Aucoin in the third period in favor of freshman Drew Foley. Aucoin started for the first time during his senior campaign, and was up to the task throughout the season.

In the third period, the Wildcats skated hard but couldn’t cash in on a trio of power plays.

“You can’t start slow in a tournament game," said Scanlon. "When you’re not ready to go until five, eight minutes into the game, that hurts you. When you get away with it, that’s one thing. But when you’re pulling pucks out of your net three minutes into the game, you’re in trouble."

Tewksbury advanced to the finals with a win over Beverly, meaning the Wildcats would have faced a team they beat 6-0 in the regular season.

A berth in the state championship game would have been on the line, but instead Wilmington came up just short.

“We’re disappointed and I know the kids are hurt,” said Scanlon. “Truth be told if you said in the beginning of the season we’d be in the semifinal game with the class we graduated, I’d say you were crazy."

Nine players graduate from this year’s team, but a slue of players are eligible to return next season.

“This is an inexperienced team, especially in the playoffs, and I think you saw some of that tonight. We were a little spooked at the beginning of the game,” said Scanlon. “Usually how your seniors go is how you go, and they did a good job pulling those young kids together and making a team out of them. We’ve got a lot of decent kids and a lot of kids coming back. They’ll benefit from being in this, win or lose.”