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By Robert Rosen
Hometown Weekly Staff
The Wellesley boys’ hockey team entered the state tournament as the 13th seed in Division 1 South after going 9-8-3 in the regular season. The Raiders had achieved one of their season goals by making the tournament and wanted to try to make a run as far as they could get.
But last week they ran into a tough Franklin team out of the Hockomock League and lost, 2-1.
“It is always tough when you lose your last game of the year, especially for a great group of seniors,” Wellesley coach Paul Donato said. “We really played a good game and in some ways just ran out of time as we were really pressing the action at the end.”
Franklin led 2-0 in the second period when it appeared that they had scored again to take a three-goal lead. But the officials ruled the puck had hit the crossbar and it appeared that may have given the Raiders a little momentum as seconds later junior Zach Doughty scored on a shot through a screen.
Wellesley controlled the remaining 23 minutes of the game, but the Raiders just couldn’t put one past the Panthers’ goaltender, who was phenomenal all night.
The loss ends a season that the Raiders consider successful, and despite the disappointment of the season coming to an end, they are hopeful that they can build off this season and have a repeat and improvement of this year’s achievement next year.
“Our goal is always to be the best team we can be and make the state tournament and by that criteria we had a very successful season,” Donato said. “The future is bright with a number of younger guys getting meaningful minutes this season.”
Robert Rosen is an Editor at Hometown Weekly. He can be reached at news@hometownweekly.net and followed on Twitter at @roberterosen.
