William Tennent’s physical play too much for North Penn

WARMINSTER>>There haven’t been many teams that have been able to slow down North Penn’s leading scorer, Alex Peterson. As a matter of fact, in the 13 games he’s played during the regular season, only Central Bucks South was able to keep him off the stat sheet. That was, until the Knights met William Tennent in the first round of the Suburban High School Hockey League (SHSHL) Playoffs.
Tennent played a physical style of defense all night, making sure it thumped Peterson whenever he got the puck, and was able to shut down the North Penn offense on their way to a 2-1 victory.
“You need a game plan against a kid like that,” said Tennent head coach Nick D’aurizio about their strategy for dealing with Peterson. “As a coach I don’t like focusing on one player but in this case it’s kind of a special case because he’s such a special player, so we did make sure we had a guy on him at all times, and nobody likes to get roughed up a bit and we have some size. If you don’t play the body on Alex Peterson he’s going to burn you so we made sure that we took a piece of him every time we went by him and every time he had the puck.”
It definitely looked like that physical style of play D’aurizio described was taking a toll on the Knights too.
As the game went on you could see the frustration building on all the North Penn players, not just Peterson, as they were being pushed around and out-hit.
The game stayed knotted throughout almost the entire first period until the Knights’ Derek Heckler took an elbowing penalty late in the frame, which allowed Sean Ovington to light the lamp for the Panthers on the power play.
“I was in the slot and it was just an easy tap in,” said Ovington. “It was a real nice set up behind the net and it came across the slot and I just was in the right place at the right time.”
After it fell behind early, North Penn struggled to get much of anything going on the offensive end. The Knights were held to just 18 shots in the entire game, and the chances that did came from outside and did little to threaten Tennent goaltender Eric Lineman.
“Their defense did a good job of shutting us down and keeping a lot of the play to the outside,” said North Penn head coach Kevin Vaitis. “Ideally we want to get more than 18 shots in the game but we just weren’t able to muster enough offense to get it.”
Not too long into the second period, Ovington would find the back of the net again for the Panthers on a goal that looked eerily similar to his first one, this time making it 2-0 and giving his team a comfortable lead.
Even though two goals isn’t an insurmountable deficit, and is often called the most dangerous lead in hockey, you just never got the feel that North Penn could climb back in it.
Eventually the Knights would get some offense going, netting a goal with 26 seconds left in the second, off the stick of Andrew Galetta, but that would be all they would manage on this night.
Even with the loss, North Penn’s season will continue as they gear up for the Flyers Cup, which they enter as an 11 seed with a first round matchup against Boyertown.
As for Tennent, the Panthers will advance in the SHSHL tournament and play the winner of the CB West vs Pennsbury matchup.