NB Hockey Early Lead Overcome by Warde-Ludlowe

Fairfield Warde-Ludlowe ice hockey clinched a berth into the CIAC State Tournament Monday night in a 5-3 win over North Branford. For North Branford, the hunt is still on, with the Thunderbirds now needing to win the rest of their games in order to clinch.

Warde-Ludlowe head coach Mark Pettorini said after clinching, the team is still fighting for home ice in the first round of the tournament.

“We reached our first goal and that’s just to get in,” Pettorini said. “Now we’re going to start cleaning everything up; we gotta polish up on the penalty kill, and we’ll start watching the other teams that are getting in and see who we end up with in the first round.”

North Branford head coach Ralph Shaw said the team’s “reoccurring theme” of inconsistency showed itself again.

“The game plan tonight was defensive zone coverage a little bit,” Shaw said. “Offensively, we just said let’s get the puck in deep and keep it deep, and I thought when we did it, we maintained good pressure down there in their end and we scored our second goal just by keeping the puck deep and cycling it and good things happen.”

Warde-Ludlowe got on the board first in the first period when Chris Santello scored an unassisted power play goal at 2:42 into the period. The Thunderbirds would respond quickly, however, when just over a minute later junior defenseman Kyle Deming found himself on a breakaway, and as he shot, a Warde-Ludlowe defense man took his feet out from under him. Deming got the shot off while he was in mid-air, and the puck trickled through the goalie’s pads to tie the game at 1-1.

North Branford took the lead with its next goal, a short-handed attack where the Thunderbirds were able to poke check the puck away and carry into the attack zone. From there, senior captain Eric Podbielski dished a pass to Ryan Dunn, who one-timed it into the back of Warde-Ludlowe’s twine.

“Our power play has been good for most of the season,” Pettorini said. “The past four or five games we struggled a little bit.”

Warde-Ludlowe would tie it up before the end of the period, though, when Tom Kryspin took advantage of a miscue on the Thunderbirds when a defenseman lost control of the puck in the defensive zone. Kryspin stole the puck away and beat the defenseman to tie the game at 2-2 with 3:27 to go.

The two teams continued to battle neck-and-neck in the second, with each team scoring. Warde-Ludlowe took a 3-2 lead when Santello scored his second of the night, assisted by Mike Aquila and senior captain Brooks Brown. The Thunderbirds would retaliate again with 2:20 left in the period when Deming scored his second of the night.

In the third, Warde-Ludlowe struck first again when senior Chris Stern sent a slap shot from the blue line to North Branford’s goal, and the puck deflected off the goalie’s leg pad and into the net.

Pettorini said the main strategy for the night was to just throw the puck at the net as much as possible.

“We came out that third period and I told those guys just throw everything at the net,” Pettorini said. “You never know what’s going to happen. Well, our captain Chris Stern shoots a sloppy shot from the blue line, it ended up going in and that kind of got us a little momentum.”

Shaw said he was hoping his team would keep working together going into the third period, but they ended up just falling short as Warde-Ludlowe notched another goal to cap the game. He said moving forward the team needs to work on putting in a more consistent effort.

“Just focus on trying to keep three 15-minute periods of hockey,” he said. “Sticking to the game plan and just doing simple things and trying to do them well.”

Warde-Ludlowe got its final goal from Mathiu Larouche, with the help of Steven Kernstock and Kryspin. The team now holds an 8-10 record, while North Branford stands at 4-11.

The night was also senior night for the Thunderbirds, with seven seniors graduating this year, captains Dave Puglisi, Podbielski, and Joe Lion, and Mike Welton, Ryan Dunn, Nick Carlino and Corey Girard.

“Those seniors have been key guys for us all year, so I thought they played well. Again we just came up short.”