METHUEN — Death. Taxes. And the Methuen/Tewksbury and HPNA girls hockey teams playing to a one-goal game.
It happened again on Wednesday night.
In a battle of two unbeaten and longtime Merrimack Valley Conference rivals, it was the Red Rangers prevailing 1-0 behind a goal from eighth grader Annalise Blais coming with 8:45 left in the third period.
“It’s always a close game with these guys. They are always a good club,” said Red Rangers interim head coach Ryan Sheehy. “They are definitely a team that you want to have in the league and to play against twice, if not three times.”
The Red Rangers (7-0) held a territorial edge in the first two periods and held a 20-7 shot advantage but couldn’t seem to catch a break. Junior defenseman Lyla Chapman made two great end-to-end rushes but was denied by HPNA goalie Chris Hinchcliffe, who was terrific making 30 saves.
Going into the third period, Sheehy knew it was just a matter of time.
“It came real close there and we have the utmost confidence in our team going into the third period,” he said. “We haven’t faced much adversity this season, well we were behind 1-0 in games against Winchester and Peabody, we loved how we battled back in those games. Going into the third period tonight we weren’t worried at all. We knew what we had to do and got it done.”
Red Rangers’ goalie Lydia Barnes (11 saves) made a terrific stick save robbing Charlotte Woodford, who slid behind the defensemen. Quickly, the Red Rangers turned up the ice with Chapman heading the puck up to Ella Duffy, who then found Blais at the right circle and she buried her opportunity.
“(Blais) can move on the ice so we want to get her out there. When she gets the puck, she knows where it’s going. The second she got it on that play, I knew it was going in,” said Sheehy.
HPNA (5-1-1) couldn’t get much going over the final eight minutes.
“Whether it’s coming into this building or whenever we play them, it’s going to be a great game,” said HPNA head coach Gary Kane. “We just have to get our team over the hump. We struggled in our systems tonight and struggled with our breakouts. Whenever you face Lydia Barnes and it’s an incredible challenge. She was spectacular. We tried to get a couple of those rebounds, but they just seemed to pop the wrong way.”