BY MATT STOUT
Goffstown hockey coach Peter Bedford buys into the philosophy that the fewest goals allowed – not the most scored – wins championships. But that doesn’t mean he’s thinking totally about defense, either.
With a 5-1 win over Alvirne on Sunday, Jan. 28, the Grizzlies continued their climb up the Division II standings with their third straight win to move to 5-2-3 entering a date with Dover on Wednesday, Jan. 31.
The offensive output was their greatest in a single game this season and followed a four-goal outburst a week earlier against Merrimack. Bedford’s club is scoring 2.1 goals per game, but it’s also yielded 16 goals, the second fewest among the league’s 12 teams.
The recent offensive resurgence isn’t an aberration, though. With his players making better decisions automatically, “as opposed to having to think about it,” Bedford said, he’s added wrinkles to Goffstown’s defensive scheme, leading to more turnovers, more scoring opportunities and less emphasis on where the Grizzlies are already strongest – in their own end.
“Scoring is a great thing, but we’re not the 1983-84 Edmonton Oilers here,” Bedford said, referring to the Wayne Gretzky-led team that scored an NHL-record 446 goals. “So what do you do? You have to do what you do well.
“I went into the season with a specific idea of how I wanted these guys to play, and one of our strengths is goaltending (in juniors Steve Case and Scott Turgeon),” he continued. “That said, I’ve kind of opened the game up a little bit more, and they’re responding. I think they’re coming together as a team, and I like what I see.”
Three weeks ago, that wasn’t the case. Coming off a 1-1 tie with Bow on Jan. 8, Goffstown entered a match-up with a one-win Winnacunnet squad “thinking that this was just going to be an easy game,” Bedford said.
It wasn’t. The 4-1 loss snapped the Grizzlies back into focus, and a week of hard skating at practice drove home the point.
Goffstown has embraced that mentality and, in the process, played itself into contention for a home playoff game.
With eight games to play, including the game at Dover, the Grizzlies are fourth in the league, just behind Keene and ahead of Lebanon, whom Goffstown beat 2-1 in overtime on an Andy Giovagnoli goal on Jan. 24.
“Spaulding is the class of the league, and it’s almost like, ‘When’s the coronation?’” Bedford said of the defending state champ, 11-0 entering Wednesday.
“But they’re not blowing people out. They didn’t blow us out (in a 3-0 win), and they didn’t blow Winnacunnet out (in a 3-0 win). So I think it’s the tightest it’s ever been in terms of Division II.”