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NORTH ANDOVER — It’s not like this hadn’t happened before.
According to North Andover head coach Denis Barrette, slow starts and tepid play have been a bugaboo all season long, and this was the case again yesterday afternoon.
As a result, against a 13-2-2 Wilmington squad owning two wins over the Knights this year and who had already clinched the Cape Ann League crown, the first period at Merrimack College was a test of survival for goaltender Tyler Morandi.
Physical play from the Wildcats combined with steals of weak backline passes to put Morandi under the gun repeatedly in the opening 15 minutes. Luckily, the junior was up to the task, repelling all attempts until the Scarlet Knights finally escalated their play.
And on Mike Indigaro’s power-play goal in the second period, North Andover’s rebound was complete on the way to an encouraging 3-1 victory that could pay dividends come tournament time.
“I try to explain to the kids what we need to do to win,” Barrette said. “The intensity needs to be there at the start because the games are only 45 minutes long.”
But it wasn’t there at the start and Wildcat skaters Ed Barrasso, Sean Tavares, Colin Foley, Jared Ravagni and Liam Gately were rewarded with four-star scoring opportunities. Morandi turned aside each shot, allowing the Knights to escape with a scoreless deadlock.
“It wasn’t too bad,” Morandi, who finished with 27 saves, said of the opening barrage. “We weren’t playing well in the first period and then the whole team stepped it up.”
“Look at it this way,” Barrette explained, “the speech at the end of the first period wasn’t exactly a classical, ‘let’s-adjust-this’ kind of speech. There was a little more of a high-tempo (message). I think we needed that.”
Behind aggressive play from top line center Ryan Sifferlen and wingers Brian O’Connor and Brian Amor, North Andover, now 9-5-5, turned the tide and opened the scoring. Amor gobbled up the rebound of a Sean McGrath wrister in the slot and tucked it into the open net past Zach Rosa (19 saves) six minutes into the middle period.
The Knights continued to press, putting four tough short-handed shots onto Rosa before an athletic power-play move by standout senior Chris Webber tied the contest with 4:44 left in the middle period. But this didn’t depress the hosts.
“We were just fired up after the second period,” Morandi said. “We were ready to go, and a tie wasn’t going to be good enough.”
On its own power play with 7:07 left in the game, Sifferlen glided through the left faceoff circle and hit Indigaro cleanly in the left slot. The senior whipped a wrist shot past Rosa’s left hip and into the twine for the eventual game-winner.
More important, the Knights then kept Wilmington bottled up in the neutral zone, not allowing the ‘Cats to pull Rosa until only 38 seconds remained. Jack Hyman stole an entry pass at his own blue line and fed Sifferlen behind the Wilmington defense for an easy empty-net marker with 16.2 seconds to wrap up the victory.
“It’s high school hockey, sometimes the guys don’t really respond or get going when we need them to,” Barrette concluded. “It’s not like we don’t have the horses. We just try to explain what we need to do to win.”

Brandon Middleton assisted Caleb Woodworth on a goal, but Triton could not find any more offense against the top team in the league, Wilmington. Coach Kevin Dodier said his Vikings played hard.