The Londonderry High ice hockey team has fallen into a rough patch recently, and the scuffling Lancers dropped their third and fourth consecutive decisions last week to slip to 4-6 in tough Division I.
The LHS icemen dropped a home game to Bedford during the middle of the week and then fell on the road to a Manchester Central crew that’s been struggling even worse than Londonderry.
The Lancers suffered their third consecutive divisional loss and slipped under the .500 mark to 4-5 with a 4-1 loss to the Bedford High Bulldogs at the Salem Icenter Wednesday night, Jan. 27.
Londonderry’s lone goal against the stingy Bedford defense was collected by Nick Donnelly, and the locals received an impressive performance in net from Cody Baldwin with 34 saves.
The Bulldogs pushed their D-I record to 8-1 that night, bagging their third straight win in the process.
Londonderry then stepped into its Saturday night game against an opponent that was scuffling even more than itself in the form of the 3-7 Manchester Central Little Green. The Queen City team had only won one of its previous six games going into that contest.
But the locals wound up making an upsetting exit from the JFK Arena that evening after watching a 1-1 tie turn into a 7-2 loss during the third period.
The Lancers potted the only goal of the first stanza – just 1:40 after the opening face-off – when Brian Murphy was set up by Patrick Murphy and Troy Muldoon.
The pace of play in the period was intense and high-speed, but that wound up being the only goal tallied. The Lancers got seven saves from freshman goalie Cam Donovan, and were a third of the way to a win.
The track meet on ice continued in the second period, but Central knotted the score at 1-1 with 7:39 remaining with what would prove to be the only marker tallied in the middle stanza.
Keeper Donovan made six more saves in that period, and he and the Lancers prepared for the third period with hopes of pulling out the win.
The host Little Green busted the 1-1 tie with a goal on a rebound just 22 seconds into the third stanza, but LHS senior captain and defenseman Colby Austin knotted the score back up with an exceptional individual effort a mere 34 seconds later when he rushed the puck in from the right point in the Central zone, skated past several defenders, and tucked a back-hander past the opposing goalie.
However, Londonderry’s hopes of gliding away with a victory on this evening fell apart under the weight of five unanswered goals by Central during the final 14:04 of play.
LHS keeper Donovan faced a total of 18 shots in the third period, and the host team collected six goals to claim the 7-2 win. All in all, the freshman goalie made 25 saves in a losing effort.