BY MATT STOUT

Tim Walsh was a frustrated man Sunday, Feb. 11, at the Whittemore Center.

Following his Bow boys hockey team’s 2-2 tie with Oyster River, the Falcons coach counted on one hand – literally – the number of minutes he felt his team gave a full-on effort. As for the number of times he’s left a game feeling the same way this season, he’d need more fingers.

Though still in prime position for a home-ice date in the Division II state tournament, Bow is far from where it wants to be come playoff time. At 8-4-3 entering a crucial match-up with Timberlane that could determine their chances for the No. 2 or No. 3 seed, the Falcons have repeatedly hurt themselves with lackluster efforts this year, Walsh said, and it’s getting to a point where the coaching staff is running out of solutions.

Walsh said he’s tried “old-school yelling between periods.” He’s sat down with players one-on-one to get their take on the team’s inconsistent play. He’s even threatened to take away ice time, much like he did prior to the second period on Sunday.

In that game, it worked – to a point. The Falcons opened the second frame at a torrid pace, scoring two goals in the first three minutes off the sticks of Pat Acone and Alex Stevens.

Then, they reverted to taking penalties, handing the momentum back to the hosts, who gladly took it to tie the game later in the third and ring up 47 shots to Bow’s 14 by game’s end.

“It keeps coming back, keeps coming up,” Walsh said. “We have the same talks in the locker room. We tried a bunch of different approaches. But it seems like there are a lot of individuals in this locker room who put their own agendas first.

“We’ve tried sitting guys when they don’t perform,” he later added. “But guys take it personal when they (sit), not that they’re not playing well. They need to look in the mirror and say, ‘What do I need to do to get better?’”

Though the tie, the second in three weeks between the two teams, solved little in the standings – Bow and Oyster River remained deadlocked at No. 3 in the league, with 7-4-3 Goffstown trailing closely – it did reassert the importance of Bow goalie Corey Cotnoir.

The senior’s 45-save effort continued what easily could be an all-state season; Cotnoir entered Sunday with the league’s second-best goals against average and save percentage – he trails different players in both categories – and has been a saving grace for an otherwise spotty Bow group.

At 3-2-2 in their past seven games before Wednesday, the Falcons scored one goal three times and two goals twice, but also scored seven on two separate occasions, albeit against Kingswood and Alvirne, two teams that combined have as many wins as Bow.

“One game we’ll have it, and the next game we won’t, and I think it’s kind of contagious,” Cotnoir said. “One or two kids stop trying, one or two kids aren’t skating full to the puck, and then the rest of the team does the same.

It kind of sets the tempo, and then the rest of the game is kind of stuck like that.

“(On Sunday) for five minutes of the whole game, I would say, we put a real good effort in,” he continued, “and we put two goals in during that five minutes. We know what we can do, but we didn’t do it."