Five different Stormers combined and recombined on the attack versus visiting Edward Little Wednesday night, Dec. 16, tallying four goals to the Red Eddies’ one to keep their team undefeated and atop the A South standings. Senior captain Matt Caron led the way with a pair of scores.

“We run a pretty tight forecheck,” said Scarborough head coach Norm Gagne of his team’s strategy overall. “We’re aggressive, we get our defensemen involved, and we try to keep it as simple as possible and have two reads for each kid, and it works for us.”

The game looked initially like it might be a much narrower tussle than it ultimately turned out to be. Neither team scored through the opening 15 minutes; Scarborough controlled the action for the most part, even when Stormer Eric Murray drew two minutes for hooking early on.

A man down, Scarborough nevertheless played aggressively, pushing the attack at any reasonable opportunity – as if they didn’t appreciate having their fire contained by standard defensive posturing.

Charging onto the ice with a bit more fury was exactly what they’d been instructed to do. “I was proud of the way we came out tonight,” said Gagne. “We’ve been coming out flat in the first period, and I told them we had to get better at getting ready to play…Even though we didn’t score in the first period, we put a lot of pressure on them, and that’s really what I wanted them to do.”

The Storm’s surge finally topped EL’s seawall in the second. Edward Little’s Cody Woodward landed in the box for interference with 11:30 to play, and 30 seconds later, Scarborough capitalized. After a blast from the point and a scramble out front of Eddies’ netminder Devin Dumont, Jack Callahan shoveled the 1-0 goal home, assisted by Cam Smith.

Seven and a half minutes later, though, EL balanced the board on a powerplay notch of their own. With Scarborough’s Kyle Jacques behind bars for interference, the Eddies’ Liam Benson fed forward to teammate Colby Bilodeau, deep in the Storm zone; Bilodeau’s off-angle shot from below the left-side faceoff dot somehow slipped past Scarborough goalie Ross LeBlond. 1-1

“The one goal we gave up,” said Gagne, “we allowed them to beat us to the puck. Our goal is to beat everyone to loose pucks, and we let up.”

But the Storm answered almost immediately – Murray and Smith assisted Caron on his first of the night, a poke past Dumont from a few feet out-left – and from there never looked back.

Caron followed up with another tally just 36 seconds into the third. Fed by Callahan, Caron picked up the puck inside the left Edward Little faceoff dot, and with almost nil room to maneuver, still managed to curl deeper before swinging back out, along the edge of Dumont’s crease.

The two collided, but Caron’s momentum carried him – sprawling through midair, but looking as comfy in flight as the Superman himself – to Dumont’s wide-open far side; the puck looked like it wanted to slide wide, but Caron had total control, and delicately yanked it, back this way just a hair, into the back of Dumont’s net.

Frankly, the whole four seconds was a thing of beauty.

Two and a half minutes later and once again on the powerplay, the Storm capped their night. Colin Hayward volleyed a shot from the right point, but Dumont made the initial save; Smith was there, however, to pick up the quick rebound for another easy-looking point. 4-1 the final.

“We want to have the reputation of playing a full-court press for 45 minutes,” said Gagne. “In your face, be aggressive, make them make mistakes and take advantage of them. When we got them to pack it in, they left our points open, we got a lot of good shots on net, and we had guys going to the net. In the second period and the third, we outshot them badly.”

Scarborough vaulted off the result to 4-0. The reigning State Champs are currently first in A South, having outscored their opponents 15-4 thus far. Their impressive start includes a 5-0 blistering of No. 2 Cheverus. Scarborough drops in on rivals Thornton Academy, fourth for now at 2-1, on Wednesday the 23rd.

“We try to generate our offense from our defense,” said Gagne. “And we play good defense; we’ve given up four goals in four games, so that’s key for us. I feel, if we can play good defense, we can play with anybody.”

Scarborough’s win was all the more impressive because EL is no slouch; they’re No. 1 in A North at present. Moreover, the Storm were minus three key players; two were injured and another was sitting for a disciplinary matter.

“Our other kids are coming in and filling in,” Gagne said. “Eric Quirk, Thomas Marshall moved up a line and Cam Smith moved up a line. And Anthony Burnham, a freshman, came in and played defense for us from JV, and he did a hell of a job for us tonight, too.”

Scarborough senior defenseman Colin Hayward hounds the Eddies’ Cody Woodward.Jack Callahan keeps a stride ahead of Edward Little’s Elijah McBride on the attack for Scarborough Wednesday night.Scarborough’s Matt Caron scores his second of the night, a spectacular combo of footwork, puck control and grit.Scarborough’s Sean McDonald dumps a puck toward the net from the point.It took two Red Eddies to bring down Matt Caron on this drive – and Caron still got the shot off.Justin Perry breaks around an EL defender.Red Storm attacker Eric Murray approaches EL defenseman Nick Kelly.