MIDDLETON — When the Amesbury hockey team plays with a certain level of intensity for the full 45 minutes of a game, it’s tough to beat.
That’s a fact the Redhawks have already displayed early on in the season, with a 1-0 shutout of a good Danvers team and a victory over Pentucket being prime examples. The program even saw it this past Monday down at Melrose, when it didn’t get the win, but still hung tough the whole time in an eventual 1-0 shutout loss.
For the past two games, though, that needed intensity has only popped up in spurts.
Following a tough loss to Beverly on Friday night, Amesbury had to turn right back around and travel down to a high-scoring Essex Tech team on Saturday afternoon. The Redhawks led by two goals late into the second period, but eventually ran out of gas in a 5-3 loss. Essex Tech (5-1-1) never stopped attacking, and has now scored at least three goals in every one of its game this year.
And for Amesbury (3-4-0), it’s now four straight losses.
“We’ve got to get back to our standard of play, we’ve got to play faster,” said Amesbury coach Steve Costa. “We had a good game against Melrose where we played with good speed, but we didn’t bring that intensity into this game. We did a little bit in the second period and at the end of the first, but we couldn’t hold onto it in the third. So we’ve got to be more consistent.”
With how Saturday’s game started, it looked like Amesbury was in for a long afternoon.
Essex Tech basically controlled the puck in its offensive zone for the game’s opening five minutes, with only a pair of icings giving Amesbury a brief moment to catch its breath. It certainly wasn’t the position goalie Evan Losee wanted to be in making his first career start, but to the freshman’s immense credit, he stood tall through the onslaught and kept it scoreless. Then eventually, defensemen Riley Guertin and Logan Genualdo helped the Redhawks tilt the ice back to being even.
Also, of course, from the skating of senior superstar Bodie Marcotte.
“It was getting used to the speed,” said Costa. “(Essex Tech) is a really quick team and really strong with the puck. We’ve got five freshmen who are playing, so we had to get used to the speed and get used to their checks.”
Spoiler alert: They did.
With five minutes left in the opening period, Marcotte — the reigning CAL Baker MVP — dished the puck over to Lincoln Kime while skating into the offensive zone. Kime would then skate around the net and find Evan Murphy creeping down from the blue line, and the sophomore defenseman ripped one top shelf for the first goal of the game. Minutes later, Marcotte would set up freshman Tommy Pourro for a goal to make it 2-0 Redhawks at intermission.
And the entire time, Losee (28 saves) was holding up.
“He played well,” said Costa. “We made a lot of mistakes in front of him in the third period, but he played well.”
But eventually, Essex Tech broke through.
Brady Leonard finally got his team on the board late in the second period, then the Hawks found the game-tying goal 30 seconds into the third thanks to Anthony Bisenti. Two straight goals from Jaydan Vargas made it 4-2 in a blink, and Brian Delisio sent home the dagger with 2:45 left.
“We tried to shorten the bench a little bit at the end when we were only down one,” said Costa. “But the kids got a little tired and made some mistakes.”
Freshman Grady Stickney would score an unassited goal with a minute left for Amesbury to make it the 5-3 final. The Redhawks will now get a few much-needed days off before hosting Newburyport on Wednesday (8:30 p.m., Salem IceCenter).