John A. Ryan Arena remains the place to go locally to catch hockey action. Blink your eyes and one game is over and another begins. On Wednesday afternoon at 4 p.m. Woburn came to town, coming off a season-opening loss to Wakefield last Saturday. Watertown/Wayland (W/W) found themselves in the same place after losing at Belmont, also on Saturday, 4-1. Two teams therefore eager to get their first win played hard, but Woburn was simply better on this afternoon on the way to a 4-0 victory.
Watertown and Wayland continue to rely on one-another in order to field a team, and the collaborative roster for this season is equally split – 11 Raiders and 11 Tanners. It’s a young roster, with one freshman, nine sophomores, six juniors and six seniors. Five captains represent the veteran presence — Wayland junior Adam Capello, Watertown junior Isaac Maillis, Watertown junior Luke Egan, Wayland senior Griffin Wood and Wayland junior Theodore Henrich. And John Vlachos returns for another season as Head Coach.
W/W came out skating with Woburn, and through the first ten minutes, it was a pretty evenly played game. But at 10:29 of the first Woburn scored to make it 1-0. W/W had just killed a penalty successfully, but back at even strength there was some miscommunication, and Woburn was left alone on the left side in front of the net and received a pass and potted home the first goal of the game — a tough break for W/W. It looked like the teams would go to the locker room at that score, but W/W had a defensive breakdown in front of their net just before the period ended, and Woburn led 2-0 after one.
Finnley Macdonald was in goal for W/W, and despite giving up four goals on the day, his play kept Watertown in this game throughout. A scoreless second period left W/W trailing by two goals, but still within striking distance if they could get one past Woburn goalie Adam Gerry. The problem was W/W just couldn’t create five-star scoring chances for themselves, much 4 or 3-star opportunities. And when Woburn came out in the third period and scored two goals in the first five minutes, the handwriting was on the wall.
The good news — despite a 4-0 deficit, W/W continued to fight and play hard and came very close to getting on the scoreboard in the last two minutes of regulation. Coach Vlachos I’m sure is encouraged by the effort despite the score, and will certainly build on that as W/W heads to Reading for their next game on Saturday. After that, W/W returns to Ryan Arena on Tuesday, Dec. 23 versus Somerville. W/W will have to deal with giving up size to many teams they face this season, but they showed a lot of heart and good team speed. They need to get stronger with the puck and create more opportunities in the offensive zone, and I’m sure Coach Vlachos will do everything he can in the weeks ahead to get the most out of this year’s team.
W/W with the 4-0 loss moves to 0-2 on the early season.
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1 2 3 – F
Woburn 2 0 2 – 4
W/W 0 0 0 – 0
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1st Period
W/W Penalty… Roughing at 8:22
Watertown 0 Woburn 1… Goal at 10:29
Watertown 0 Woburn 2… Goal at 14:39
Woburn Penalty… Hooking @ 14:43
2nd Period
No Scoring
Woburn Penalty… Interference @ 3:01
Watertown Penalty… Tripping @ 9:54
3rd period
Watertown 0 Woburn 3… Goal at 0:33
Watertown 0 Woburn 4… Goal at 4:24
Woburn Penalty… Roughing @ 6:58