La Salle learned its lesson. Now it's fighting hard to win a boys hockey state championship
SMITHFIELD — The La Salle boys hockey team that took the ice on Friday night against North Kingstown is not the one that started the season.
All it took was an unexpected loss in their season opener for the Rams to realize if they wanted to compete for a state championship, they had to do more than just show up.
La Salle didn’t care what North Kingstown’s record was on Friday. It treated the game like it was the last of the season and, backed by a four-goal performance from Seamus Murphy and a second period that shut the door on the result, pulled out a 9-0 win that showed just how different the team is now.
“Adversity, my last two years here, we’ve never faced it early in the year,” La Salle junior Tyler Garafalo said. “We’ve always faced it toward the playoffs and later in the year. Getting it now is a good thing so we can build a wagon and go.”
Go is what the Rams did. Here’s what stood out on Friday night:
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La Salle fans don’t wear hats to hockey rinks
Murphy understands his role for the Rams and lighting the lamp isn’t atop his duties.
What Murphy does well is work. He sees the ice well, moves the puck and is willing to give every last ounce of himself on every shift. Murphy takes advantage of his opportunities and on Friday, the puck kept finding his stick.
North Kingstown was battling to keep the Rams off the scoreboard in the first period until Murphy broke the scoreless tie with a goal with 6:24 left. It took 3:27 for him to find his second.
“My goal is to win. I don’t think of myself as a goal-scorer,” Murphy said. “I just kind of do my job and if it comes to me, it comes to me and I’m happy with that.”
The 2-0 lead looked nice, but it was hardly safe. It took Murphy 96 seconds to eliminate the most dangerous lead in hockey and earn himself the hat trick even though it wasn’t something he felt like he was chasing.
“I want to make my teammates better,” said Murphy, who added a fourth by scoring the last goal of the game. “I want the team to score goals at the end of the day, but ultimately it feels good to pop that hat trick.”
“We’ll let it happen,” Garafalo said. “He was working like a dog so it was going to come, automatic.”
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Rams avoided complacency
The Rams scored four times in the second — goals from Murphy, Matt Franco, Evan Barbosa and Garafalo — and while they committed three penalties, they were able to kill all three and even score a shorthanded goal.
There’s no cliché around a 6-0 lead, but La Salle added three in the first five minutes as Drew Bradley, Ben Gregorek and Murphy all scored.
“We’ve had games before where we come back to the locker room and get complacent,” Murphy said. “But we came out hard and we finished the job. That’s what we need to do for the rest of the season and we did a good job [on Friday].”
“That’s our biggest thing,” Garafalo said. “In games like these when we know we can score and put up points, just sticking to it and finding things that work so when the close games come, like Hendricken or Prout, we can find ways to bury.”
La Salle’s eyes are wide open
The Rams entered the season with high expectations, but the 3-1 loss to Prout — which remains without a loss after beating undefeated Hendricken on Friday night — in the season opener changed how the team approached the rest of the season.
Friday’s win was its fourth straight in D-I, having previously beaten Pilgrim, Smithfield and Moses Brown. The Rams have put together a tough nonleague schedule — including a game against Hendricken — and it’s helped as they’ve put themselves back on the road they thought they were traveling when the season started.
“We know what kind of team we are. We know what kind of capabilities we have,” Garafalo said. “It’s just getting pucks to the nets, working, cycling and bearing down on chances and opportunities.”
“We stared the season off a little slow, but we’re definitely on an incline working our way up,” Murphy said. “We have good camaraderie in the locker room and we’re working toward the ultimate goal of a state championship.”
What’s next
Friday was the only league game for La Salle this weekend as the Rams were set to play Fairfield College Prep in a nonleaguer on Saturday.
Next weekend, the Rams will play East Greenwich and a sneaky tough Barrington — which beat them last year in Smithfield — before closing January with traditional rival Mount St. Charles and an always tough Burrillville team.
There’s no time to lose momentum. Friday’s victory was nice, but La Salle needs to win these games to help prepare for the first weekend of February, which could be the biggest of the season. That’s when La Salle plays Hendricken and Prout on back-to-back nights.
“I feel like they’re always in the corner of our eye,” Garafalo said. “We’re just going to work on one game at a time, work to our abilities, put the puck in the net and do our jobs.”
“It’s really a snowball for us,” Murphy said. “I just see us keep moving forward and getting better each and every day. At the end of the day, it’s going to be the team that works the hardest and shows up every single day and wants it the most.”
This article originally appeared on The Providence Journal: La Salle boys hockey shuts out North Kingstown in convincing win Friday
