Trail Blazers fall to Saint Dominic Academy in regular-season hockey finale

By Matt Pascarella

The Windham/Bonny Eagle/Westbrook Trail Blazers took on Saint Dominic Academy in their final game of the regular prep hockey season on Wednesday, Feb. 19 at the University of Southern Maine in Gorham and although the Trail Blazers fought hard, they came out on the wrong end of a 2-0 score.

Senior Cole Heanssler of Windham maneuvers toward the
goal during a Trail Blazers prep hockey game against
Saint Dominic Academy on Feb. 19.
PHOTO BY MATT PASCARELLA

It was Senior Night and Windham’s Ben Shaw, Erik DuPont, Sam Foley, Philip Traina, Shaun Traina, Cole Heanssler and Bonny Eagle’s Massimo Massaro and Shep Howard were recognized for their time and dedication to the sport of hockey throughout their high school careers.

“We’ve come off kind of a winning streak,” said Heanssler. “We started to get comfortable expecting wins instead of working for them, so we came out pretty slow and ended up going down and it was just a struggle to recover; we weren’t able to generate any offensive plays. We all kind of worked our hardest, especially in the last few minutes of the third (period). I don’t feel like we’re the team that starts losing and gives up, I think we worked until the end there – it just didn’t work the way we wanted to. I think our breakouts were doing pretty good, we were able to get it out of the zone pretty easily. We did have shots on net; I think we need to start working the puck a little more in the offensive zone, especially up to our defensemen. (We need) movement and getting more shots on net; we need it to be a team rotation of all five guys.”

Trail Blazers came out strong with a shot on goal in the first 45 seconds. They were working to be first to the puck. Saint Dominic Academy led 1-0 after one period.

In the second period, Trail Blazers worked hard to score. They were aggressive and battled. Saint Dominic Academy scored again, but the Trail Blazers weren’t discouraged. They had solid puck movement and really pressured toward the end of the period.

“It’s just not really what we’re looking for,” said DuPont. “We had a lot of guys sick; that’s definitely part of it. There’s not really a specific factor – we win as a team; we lose as a team. Definitely when we were working pucks low to high, that works well – we just got to get back to that, I guess. Better puck movement was working ... move our feet more, move pucks faster, get our heads up (needs work); collectively get better chemistry together and get ready to work at that playoff level speed.”

The Trail Blazer defense kept Saint Dominic Academy scoreless during the third period, and Trail Blazer offense were first to the puck and had several solid shots on goal, but didn’t score.

“What went well was our goalie played really, really well,” said Trail Blazer coach Bobby Fothergill. “We’ve asked a lot of him this year and he’s delivered; he’s worked really hard to get better and better before each game. We had glimpses of good offense zone time – I never question their effort, their effort is always there, it was more just poor execution. When we did execute ... working pucks low to high, high to low, getting the d(efense) involved, we had 12 good minutes this whole game.”

As Fothergill looks to the postseason, he said the team needs to play their game and play with intensity, passion and love of the game. He said he doesn’t want his players to make things bigger than needed and to just play hockey.

The Trail Blazers will play Thornton Academy in the playoff quarterfinals at the Biddeford Ice Arena at 5:40 p.m. Saturday, March 1. <