By Blake Santana
This past Saturday, the Alvirne-Milford hockey squad took to the ice to play host to the Goffstown Grizzlies for their 2023-24 home opener.
The Admirals, led by some stellar goaltending by sophomore Kian Corcoran, they beat the Grizzlies for the first time in team history.
The Admirals, who had gone 0-8 against Goffstown since the Alvirne-Milford merge in the 2018-19 season in NHIAA play, clung to a 1-0 victory on Saturday night.
Both teams came out of the gates playing very physical hockey, with more hits being dished out in the first fifteen minutes of action than in the entire game against the Raiders of Lebanon-Stevens-Mascoma.
In a game in which the home-standing Admirals took 11 penalties, ordinarily, it wouldn’t be expected that the Maroon and Navy would come out on top, but that’s exactly what happened. This was only made possible by what might have been the single-best penalty kill performance in NHIAA hockey history.
Coach Thibeault said the coaching staff was extremely proud of the resiliency and work ethic put out by the players, “That was the best game I’ve seen a defensive core play blocking shots and containing gap control,” he said when asked about his team’s play, “The overall back checking by the forwards and the hard forecheck set the tone for the game. Kian Corcoran getting his first career shutout against a very good Goffstown team was the icing on the cake,” he added.
Coach Tom has worked hard with the defense and it has shown immediate results. The forward group led by Coach Dave is playing unselfish hockey with some great passing. The team is buying in and realizing their potential. It will continue to take a total team effort to continue to be successful.
Coach Thibeault has always expected his players to stay humble, continue to work hard, and improve every single day.
The lone goal of the night came off the stick of Byrce Larco, on a great breakout play sprung by winger James Nemeth, he beat the Grizzlies netminder on the five-hole to put the Admirals in the lead, where they would never look back.
Another major piece to the whole equation was sophomore goaltender, Kian Corcoran, who playing in just his second game of Division 2 action for the Admirals, got his first high school shutout, stopping all 42 shots he faced, raising his save percentage to .988, and lowering his GAA to 0.50, allowing just one goal in two games.
The three stars of the night easily have to be Kian Corcoran, the entirety of the Admirals PK, and Bryce Larco. Corcoran for his stellar shutout performance, the Admirals’ penalty kill unit for their 11/11 performance when down a man on the ice, and Bryce Larco for his game-winning goal that turned out to be the lone marker in the game.
