Despite a Rocky Start, Worcester Hockey is on the Rise

WORCESTER – Inconsistent hockey in their defensive zone in the first two games of the season has plagued the Worcester High School boys’ hockey team in this young winter season. But they may have righted the ship in their recent game against St. Paul last week. With the help of two goals by center Aiden LePoer and a goal and two assists from winger Luke Evers, the Wildcats skated past their Russell Conference rival, 6-3, in a relatively easy victory.

Worcester jumped to a 4-0 lead midway through the second on goals by junior forward Jack Duehring in the first period and senior forward Nathan LaPrade, LePoer, and Evers in the second. However, St. Paul outscored the Wildcats 3-2 in the second half of the game as Worcester became a little too loose in front of their goalkeeper, senior captain Josh Lemieux, who made 18 saves in the game. Regardless, Evers and senior forward Brandon Martocci scored the final two goals for Worcester to put the game out of reach. The Wildcats improved to 2-1 and climbed into second place in the league, while St. Paul dropped to 0-3.

Worcester may have won, but that does not mean they corrected everything. They still gave up three goals. Coach Michael Vaughan said Lemieux is their best defender, but he cannot stop the puck alone. The Wildcats have given up 13 goals in three games, including three more Friday night. Lemieux’s goals against average (GAA) is 4.33 and he has a save percentage of 84.7.

“Josh Lemieux is the strength of our team,” Vaughan said. “We could definitely be better in front of him.”

Worcester defenseman and senior captain Nick Michaelian, who is part of the Wildcats top defensive pairing with sophomore Sal Smarra, said their play in the

Worcester defenseman and senior captain Nick Michaelian

defensive zone has been the main weakness of the team. “We definitely need to work on our defensive zone,” he said. In their 5-1 loss to Nashoba in the second game of the season, he said the defense had difficulty with a lot of drop passes in front of the net and open passes from behind the net. “We just got to watch out for those passes. They had a lot of cross crease passes and just stuff like that which gave us trouble.”

Michaelson said, as a team, they need to be physical and separate the opponent from the puck. Vaughan said Michaelson is mentoring the younger more inexperienced defensemen, like Smarra, and sophomore defenseman James Morse and junior defensemen Matthew Rousakos and James LeProhon, to be more physical in games.

Worcester junior defenseman Matthew Rousakos

“I definitely bring my physicality, rubbing them off on the wall and separating them from the puck,” Michaelian said. “I just give the younger players little pieces of advice during drills and in game situations. I try to show them stuff they should just be doing and this is from previous lessons I have learned.”

The Wildcats’ strength has been their offensive production, especially from LePoer and Evers, who combined to score eight of the team’s 11 goals in the last three games.

“My job is to move the puck up to Evers,” LePoer said. “We move it around the zone. You have to move the puck around and get it deep and get it on net. We also try to get to loose pucks and rebounds.”

“We move the puck well on offense,” said Evers, who was the Wildcats leading scorer two years ago and he was selected as a Central Mass all-star that year. There was no season last year because of Covid restrictions. Evers has several great attributes that make him a good goal scorer: he’s a fast skater; he has a powerful shot; and he has good hands, which helps him handle the puck on his stick. Evers said he may play professional hockey next season with either the Boston Junior Bruins, an American junior ice hockey club that plays in Marlborough, or he could play in the Eastern Hockey League [EHL], which is an American Tier III Junior ice hockey league.

Worcester senior captain and first line center Aiden LePoer scores a goal in a recent game. Photo by Kevin Paul Saleeba

“Luke is very modest and humble, which I appreciate, but he’s fast,” Vaughan said. “He was our leading scorer his sophomore year and it’s great to have our leading scorer back.”

Lemieux said he thinks they can correct their mistakes as the season moves along and as the team gets their legs under them with more practice time. “I just think we

Josh Lemieux in action

all want to be here working,” he said. “Obviously, taking a season off and not playing hockey for a while has been difficult, but it’s actually nice to get back on the ice. We all missed it last year.

“We had a really quick start to the season,” he said. “Obviously, playing two games the week before with just a week of practice and having two games back-to-back was tough. A lot of us haven’t been skating for a while so a lot of us were not in shape, but we’re definitely getting back into it with our coach.”

Lemieux also said Coach Vaughan has got the team moving in the right direction. “Coach has some stellar looks to him, he’s been doing it for a while, so he pretty much knows how to get us ready,” he said. “I don’t know how he makes a difference, but he just does. He understands some of the struggles we definitely have to deal with which is nice and he has us getting better. We’re a small team and we don’t have a lot of lines so he definitely gives it to us and hopefully it will carry over into the games.”

Evers said the team will continue to improve with a chance to play in the postseason. “We got to work on our defensive game a lot more, but we’re a pretty physical team,” he said. “That’s where it starts. We move the puck well definitely with our offense, but once we get together and play more as a team, we’re going to be pretty good.”