DOVER — You don’t want to give the St. Thomas Aquinas High School boys hockey team an inch. You do and the Saints will take a foot.
Dover took eight penalties Monday afternoon and STA made them pay in a big way. The Saints scored three power-play goals en route to a 4-1 win at the Dover Ice Arena to remain unbeaten in Division II at 8-0.
The Green Wave dropped their second straight to fall to 5-3-1.
“A lot came down to special teams,” said STA coach Wayne Sheehan. “We had some good bounces. We were able to execute and get a 'W.'”
Will MacLean and Jojo Grella scored two goals each for the Saints, including one apiece in the third period to turn a 2-1 lead into a 4-1 win. Grella also had an assist.
MacLean’s goal was the backbreaker. His shot from inside the left point deflected high off a Dover defender, redirected and trickled into the left corner for the 3-1 lead at 4:51. Dover freshman goalie Devin Lapierre was committed to the right post and never had a chance to recover.
“What can I say, there’s a little bit of luck in hockey,” MacLean said. “It kept the boys going. We were definitely alive on the bench. That two-goal margin lifted our spirits. We were all in after that.”
Dover had its best chance to close the gap with 2:45 to play. A flurry in front of the STA goal led to three saves by Chris Eno, who stopped 19 of 20 Green Wave shots.
Grella added a second insurance goal with 1:45 to play, also on the power play from Keegan Youngclaus.
“We were playing more defensively at that point,” Grella said. “It was nice.”
Lapierre had 20 saves for Dover.
“It’s tough to win against a quality team like that when you’re in the box so much,” said Dover coach Mike Young. “I knew they had a good power play and I knew special teams would definitely be a factor in the game. Unfortunately we strayed away from our game plan. We didn’t get much 5-on-5 time.”
After a scoreless first period in which Dover dodged an early bullet by surviving three penalties, STA got on the board early in the second.
Grella fired a shot from the top of the right circle into the upper left corner for the 1-0 lead, the only even-strength goal of the game. Zach Talbot earned the assist.
After Aiden McDonough took a two-minute minor for interference, St. Thomas scored the first of their three power-play goals. MacLean scored from in front on an assist by Grella to make it 2-0 at 6:29.
“We were winning the battles, honestly,” Grella said. “That’s what we were doing — winning battles, being more aggressive than they were. They took a lot of dumb penalties and we took advantage of that.”
Dover managed to respond with a power-play tally of its own at 11:25 with Alex Schlapak scoring in the final second of the man advantage from Jameson Goodridge.
But that was it. Dover took a late penalty in the second that carried over to the third, and then took three more penalties in the final period. STA scored during two of them.
“We’ve tried to be focused shift to shift and not get too high or not get too low,” Sheehan said. “We’ve had some games where we’ve been down 1-0 or 2-1 and then we have a strong second period. That seems to be our calling card this year. We got two goals in the second period. They got a goal, but we still walked out up 2-1.”
And then tacked on two more in the third to put the game away.
“It was a momentum booster for them,” Lapierre said. “It ruined our game a little bit. It wouldn’t have been that way if we weren’t taking so many penalties.
"They’re a bunch of clowns," the Dover goalie added. "They like to get inside your head, take you out of the game and put a couple in the net. I think they just got to us.”
St. Thomas visits Windham Wednesday. Dover hosts Alvirne Saturday. The two meet again in Dover on Feb. 7.
“We had a tough three-game stretch with Windham, Goffstown and St. Thomas,” Young said. “I think the guys ran out of steam today.”