CANTON – Over their last six games, the HPNA girls hockey team has played exceptional hockey, giving up seven total goals to six eventual Division 1 state tournament teams.
On Saturday afternoon, HPNA again put forth a tremendous effort against yet another high quality playoff team. However, the No. 12 seed (9-10-3) couldn’t find the back of the net, while No. 5 seed Hingham (18-5-1) scored a short-handed goal midway through the first period before adding two more to go on and win, 3-0, in a Division 1 Round of 16 game played at the Canton Ice House.
“That is an amazingly strong team,” said HPNA head coach Gary Brown. “That’s one of the reasons why we played the schedule that we did so we could be ready for playoffs teams (like Hingham). They were exceptional tonight. What I loved about our team was even though we had the early struggles with the three first period penalty kills, we withstood all of those, but then we gave up a short-hander.”
Hingham’s Caroline Doherty, who Brown called the best individual player his team has faced all season, scored the short-hander, and then the insurance goal coming with 10:12 left in the second period. Teammate Alexa Harris scored the third one, batting a puck out of the air off a rebound at the right side of the net coming with 2:44 left in the second.
HPNA was outshot 39-10, but had several good bids, including Paige Nottingham getting denied on two breakaway bids.
“(Hingham) got timely goaltending and some timely goals, so if we could have popped just one goal, it’s a whole different game. I was very proud of the kids. Going into the third period against that kind of an offensive team, they never let up,” said Brown.