This has a very familiar feel to it.
When the girls hockey North regional tournament opens Wednesday night, it will do so with a pair of foes who know each other all too well. After splitting a pair of regular-season meetings, No. 4 Yarmouth/Freeport and No. 5 Winslow/Gardiner/Cony (9-8-1) are set to play at the Travis Roy Ice Arena for a spot in the regional semifinals against top-seeded and unbeaten Lewiston (17-0-1). Puck drop is scheduled for 7 p.m.
Last season, Yarmouth/Freeport (9-9-0) ended the Black Tigers’ season in the quarterfinal round.
“Most of the girls we have playing were in there last year for that,” Winslow/Gardiner/Cony coach Alan Veilleux said. “They’re not too far removed from that. I’d say there is some motivation to go down and see if we can’t change that around.”
In the other North quarterfinal, No. 3 Edward Little/Leavitt/Poland hosts No. 6 Mt. Ararat/Lisbon. The winner advances to meet No. 2 St. Dominic/Winthrop/Gray-New Gloucester.
Winslow/Gardiner/Cony beat Yarmouth/Freeport in the season opener back in November on the road. When the Black Tigers hosted the Clippers on Dec. 27, the visitors flipped the script.
The Black Tigers went 5-4-1 over their last 10 games of the regular season, a stretch that included a win over the No. 3 seed in the South region, Cheverus, and a win and a tie against Greely. Those are signs that Veilleux believes suggest his team is ready for the postseason.
“We’ve been playing pretty well late in the season,” Veilleux said. “The girls have been aggressive, hungry for the puck. We’ve started to jell together defensively, and they’re doing the things we’ve been trying to teach them all season.”
The defensive component is key. For a team that hasn’t scored goals in bunches this winter — in 10 games Winslow/Gardiiner/Cony scored three or fewer goals — keeping the opposition off the scoreboard has been a priority. The top defensive pair of Katie Bailey and Gabby Hebert is complemented by the duo of Kylie Boardman and Grace Bilodeau, and that foursome has relieved some of the pressure on the top line of Lindsey Bell, Julia Hinkley and Alicia Wall.
“Our defense can handle the puck and get it out of the zone,” Veilleux said. “They’ve got the advanced skills to do that. We’ve finished over .500, we’ve won most of the games we should have, and that’s a big part of it.”
In the South region, Scarborough (15-1-2) is the top seed, with Cape Elizabeth/Waynflete/South Portland (12-5-1) entering the postseason at No. 2.
Other than the two top seeds in their respective brackets, Lewiston and Scarborough are the only girls hockey teams with fewer than five losses on their record. The Blue Devils and Red Storm played to a 1-1 tie in the final game of the regular season last Saturday night. Lewiston also beat Scarborough 2-0 on Dec. 18.
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