Playing against the defending champion Concord hockey team is challenging enough. If you give the Tide any additional advantages, that squad will make you pay. Dearly. That’s what happened to Bow (2-1) on Wednesday night at Everett Arena.
Concord (2-0) scored less than two minutes after the opening puck dropped, went 2-for-3 on the power play and outshot the Falcons 34-8 as the Tide rolled to a 4-0 victory.
Not only does Concord have the advantage of being loaded with experience from last year’s Division I championship and plenty of depth, but the Tide also boasts what Bow head coach Tim Walsh considers the best top line in the state: senior assistant captain Colin Nelson on the left wing, junior captain Brooks Craigue at center and senior captain Tyler Coskren on the right wing.
The first goal, however, came off the stick of senior center Donovan Hayes just 1:52 into the game when he fired home a wrist shot from the slot. The starting defensive pair of sophomore Jack Shoemaker and junior Joey Tarbell had the assists on the goal.
“We didn’t give ourselves a chance,” Tim Walsh said. “We’re so much better than we’ve been in the past few years and we just didn’t even give ourselves a chance to play. That’s the disappointing part. We have the ability. We have the depth, but we didn’t give ourselves a chance. We came in right away, half asleep. The first goal they scored, we weren’t aggressive enough going after the loose puck. We let them come in.”
Shoemaker (two assists), Tarbell and the Nelson-Craigue-Coskren line, combined for three goals and seven assists, and also provided all the goals and assists in the Tide’s 5-1 season-opening victory over Salem, last year’s runner-up.
“They played together last year. You’ve got two seniors and a junior – Brooks Craigue – who could be the best player in the league,” Concord head coach Dunc Walsh said. “They’re a really good line – they move the puck well. They just need to keep moving it around and being unselfish and they’re going to score goals.”
Craigue scored on a 5-on-3 power play in the second period. Nelson also scored on a power play early in the third after a flurry of activity in front of the Bow goal and Shoemaker slammed home a shot from the blue line with 8:26 remaining to cap the scoring.
Coskren had a pair of assists, while second-line sophomore winger Dawson Fancher was the only player not on the top line to record an assist.
Concord could have easily scored even more had it not been for Bow’s sophomore goalie Mason Marquis, who made 30 saves.
Senior Blake Scarinza, junior Finn Benoit and freshman Patrik Jurcins played well defensively for the Falcons, keeping the score to 1-0 for about half of the game and was a much better outing than when the two teams last met – a 9-1 victory for the Tide in last year’s D-I quarterfinal.
But the Tide’s defense was more solid, allowing no more than four shots on goal in any period, while successfully killing off two penalties.
Senior Will Pegnam turned aside eight shots to secure Concord’s shutout, while Shoemaker, Tarbell and senior AJ Fennelly logged the most minutes on the blueline.
“The forwards did a good job, but defensively we did a good job taking care of chances that (Bow) had,” Dunc Walsh said. “The key is getting the puck out of our end. If the puck is out of our end, we can’t give (a goal) up, so we stress that all the time. Get the puck and make the right play. Don’t try to do too much.”
Both programs now turn their attention to next week’s Brian Stone Memorial Christmas Tournament, which will be played Sunday through Wednesday at Manchester’s JFK Coliseum.
Concord will play in the McDonough Division with Bedford, Hanover and Trinity, with the top two teams squaring off in the tournament final, while Bow will compete in the Tafe Jr. Division with the newly-formed Manchester Central-West-Memorial co-op team, Exeter and Goffstown. The top team from the Tafe Jr. Division will be promoted to the McDonough Division in 2022.
“We’re definitely (focusing on intensity),” Tim Walsh said. “You’ve got to show up to play. I don’t care who you’re playing against. I think right now we’re in the process of this program where we’re trying to build back to where we were and you can’t take any games off. We need to build that confidence and that work ethic, learning how to win.”
As good as the Tide – and its starting unit – has been, Concord still knows it has room to improve.
“We’ll use a lot of guys next week and keep working on the things we need to work on, breaking out of our own end, our forecheck could be better,” Dunc Walsh said. “Sometimes we only get one guy on the puck and we need to get more guys involved. … We just want to keep getting better.”