It’s not like the Newburyport girls hockey team was playing poorly.
Heading into Wednesday night’s rematch against rival Gloucester, the Clippers had won three of their past five games. But even with those positive results, they still had to watch as they slowly slid outside of the Division 2 playoff field — dropping to No. 33 in the latest rankings.
Somehow, with only four games remaining, it felt like the team couldn’t slip up.
And thankfully, Holly Sullivan made sure it didn’t.
The junior was outstanding on Wednesday night, scoring three goals to lead Newburyport to a much-needed win over Gloucester, 4-3. The hat-trick brought Sullivan to nine goals for the season, and more importantly, the victory helped the Clippers (8-8-1) draw closer to automatically qualifying for the tournament via the .500 rule.
“This was huge for us. Holly had an amazing game,” said Newburyport coach Josh Freeman. “The whole team really showed up for this one.”
Olivia Wilson scored her area-high 24th goal of the season for the team’s final tally of the night, and she also assisted on two of Sullivan’s goals. Finally, Allie Simons had another strong game with two assists.
Clippers make multiple comebacks, tie Dartmouth
After a week off, the Newburyport boys certainly returned with a thriller.
On three separate occasions on Wednesday night, the Clippers trailed visiting Dartmouth by three goals. But thanks to plenty of grit, execution and heroics down the stretch, the Clippers were able to make the comeback and nearly win it in overtime before settling for the 5-5 tie.
The start, however, was less than ideal.
Just a minute into the second period, Newburyport (10-8-1) found itself trailing, 3-0. Henry Waddell scored an unassisted goal to get the Clippers on the board, but a few minutes later, Dartmouth went back up 4-1. Then the same thing basically happened in a three-minute stretch, when Jack Sullivan poked home a Waddell rebound with two minutes left in the second, but was followed by a Dartmouth goal to make it 5-2 a minute into the third.
Newburyport just didn’t quit.
Luke MacIsaac started the team’s third comeback of the night, scoring with 10 minutes left after some tic-tac-toe passing between Sullivan and Waddell. Then two minutes later, Tommy Gagnon put home a rebound off an Owen Mongeau shot to make it 5-4. Finally, with two minutes left, Brian Lucy sent Mongeau in on a 2-on-1, and Finn McNeil put home the game-tying rebound after the Dartmouth goalie saved the initial shot.
The Clippers would start OT on a 4-on-3 power play, but couldn’t convert.
Amesbury beats Rockport by TKO
Man, did Amesbury need this one.
After going 2-9-1 over its last 12 games, the Redhawks had slowly fallen to “the bubble” of Division 2, coming in at No. 28 in the latest rankings. There really wasn’t much wiggle room left to play around with, certainly with only three games remaining on the regular season schedule. But the Redhawks made sure to get back into the win column with a thrashing of Rockport on Wednesday night, getting 3 goals and 2 assists from Bodie Marcotte in a 10-0 blowout.
Evan Murphy also notched a hat-trick for Amesbury (6-10-1), whose other goals came from Brogan Arivella, Van DiLorenzo, Wes Ackerman and Grady Stickney. Each of those four also had an assist, as did Maddox LeBlanc (2), Riley Guertin (2), Tommy Pourro (2), Logan Pickering and Thomas McElaney.
Finally, Nick Boothroyd made 16 saves to post the shutout.
Tough night for Pentucket
Something needs to change, and fast. Pentucket unfortunately had its third straight tough night at the office on Wednesday, falling in a lopsided one to North Reading, 8-1. Chase Pelletier had the lone goal for the Panthers (7-11-0), who aren’t in danger of missing the Division 4 state tournament, but certainly don’t want to be playing the way they currently are heading into it.