Jake Roche
The Watertown hockey team celebrates scoring against Northeast Regional in the state tournament.
Thursday night the Watertown Raiders boys hockey team pulled together to defeat Northeast Metro Tech 3-0 in the first step toward defending their state title.
Watertown finished the first period strong, with senior Matthew Busconi setting the tone with by giving the Raiders a 1-0 in the MIAA Div. 3 North Section first round game at Billerica High School.
Watertown head coach Mike Hayes said he was pleased with his team’s effort.
“Although we haven’t played for three weeks, I can definitely say that we deserved this win by the way we played tonight,” Hayes said. “I do think we started off the game trying to impress instead of playing for ourselves, but we managed to fix that rather quickly.”
During the second period with only 2 minutes left to spare, Michael Giordano scored to put the Raiders on top 2-0.
As the final period came to play, Northeast Tech had yet to score a goal against senior goalie Jason Hughes. With 6 minutes left to go in the third, Giordano got the assist on a goal from senior Nick Martino that gave the Raiders a commanding a 3-0 lead.
“Of course our goalie had an amazing game, but we all had an amazing game,” Hayes said. “We played as a team, and even more importantly we played as a family. That is how you’ll win games.”
Both teams battled hard throughout the rest of the game, but when that buzzer sounded, the Raiders were still on top with a 3-0 victory.
Hayes said his team has much to work on for the quarterfinal, which will be back home at Ryan Arena at 7 p.m. on Monday, March 7 against Weston.
“We played with discipline and overall we did a great job tonight, but we still need to work on everything,” Hayes said. “By saying that, I mean we need to work on all facets of the game regardless of how we performed tonight. You can never practice enough. Tonight’s performance was good, but we have lots to work on in order to prepare for our next game.”
{Note: The third goal was corrected and given to Martino.}