In what is beginning to appear to be an annual ritual, Portsmouth faced off with the Ponaganset Chieftains Friday evening  at the Levy Community Ice Center in Harrisville for the first game of the 2019 Division II State Championship Tournament.  This is the third consecutive year the two teams have met in the opening round of the playoffs.  In 2017 the Chieftains won the best of three series in three games, and last year the Patriots took the round in two games to advance to the semi-finals.  This time, skating on the Chieftains home ice, the Patriots lost the first game of the series by a score of 9-3.

Portsmouth got off to a slow start and gave up two goals to Ponaganset in the first five minutes of the game, but got back into contention with a goal by Gus Nightingale at the 6:21 mark.  The Chieftains took a two goal lead for the second time in the period with a power play tally with three and a half minutes left in the first period.

Still down two goals, and less than twenty seconds remaining in the period, the Patriots went on a power play of their own.  It would be the only won they would have in the entire game, but they took full advantage of it.  Max Dooley scored with five seconds left in the period to close the scoring gap to just a single goal.  As the game paused for the first intermission, Portsmouth was just a goal back of the Chieftains and very much in the game.

Scoring just before the first period ended caused a big momentum shift in Portsmouth’s favor which carried over to the second period.  The Patriots had taken charge of the game and had their opponents back on their heels.  Three minutes into the period Connor Little tied the game at three goals apiece and things were looking like Portsmouth had a real chance to defeat the team that trounced them 11-0 just two weeks prior.

The Patriots continued to ride their momentum and played the Chieftains evenly until just past the midpoint of the period.  At that time the squad had a few lapses and mistakes in its own end of the ice.  Ponaganset, always dangerous, jumped on the errors and ripped off three goals in four minutes to build a commanding lead as the period ran out.

The Patriots tried to regroup during the second intermission.  Three goals is a lot to make up, but is not an insurmountable task.  But when the team returned to the ice for the start of the final period the players’ hopes of getting back into the game were quickly dashed.  Ponaganset ran its lead to four goals with a tally just twenty-five seconds after the opening face-off.

From that point on, Ponaganset dominated the game and capped it off with two more goals  before the final buzzer to win it by a score of 9-3.

After overcoming the early deficit to get back into the game, and having the first half of the contest go well enough to begin to think victory was a real possibility, giving up six unanswered goals was particularly demoralizing.  But the squad now knows it can compete with Ponaganset and will make the necessary adjustments to sustain that effort for the entire game before the teams meet again for Game 2.

The Patriots were outshot 50-29 on the night.  Sam Stamoulis had 41 saves in taking his first playoff loss.  The team scored on its only power play of game, but was successful in killing only two of four situations with a player in the penalty box.  Mac Dunn earned an assist on Gus Nightingale’s goal, and Nightingale finished with a two point effort by assisting on Max Dooley’s tally.  Connor Little’s goal was scored unassisted.

The team is down, but definitely not out, in the best of three series.  With Saturday’s game postponed due to weather, the Patriots will have their next shot at Ponaganset on Sunday, March 3rd at 1:30 pm.  That game will be played at the Abbey, the squad’s home ice.  The Patriots will be looking for a win to even the series and force a decisive game three next week.  Head over to the Abbey tomorrow afternoon and root for the home team.  See you at the rink.