HALLOWELL — The Mt. Ararat/Lisbon/Morse boys hockey team showed no signs of fatigue on Tuesday, despite playing its second game in less than 24 hours and third game in the last four days. In fact, Noah Austin looked as fresh as if he were playing in a season opener.

A junior center, Austin scored all four goals against Cony/Monmouth/Hall-Dale, leading the Eagles to a 4-0 win in a Class A North game with significant playoff implications at the Camden National Bank Ice Vault.

Mt. Ararat junior Cade Charron made 23 saves for his second shutout of the season, as the Eagles (9-4-0) won their fourth straight game and avenged a loss to Cony (7-4-1) less than three weeks ago. Mt. Ararat beat Windham/Westbrook on Monday night at the Ice Vault, two days after topping Lawrence/Skowhegan/MCI over the weekend.

The defeat snapped Cony’s unbeaten streak at seven games.

PLAYER OF THE GAME: Austin now has a team-leading 17 goals on the season for Mt. Ararat. He leads Class A North in goals and points (33).

Austin now has six goals and eight assists in his last four games, over which the Eagles are 4-0-0. On Monday, Austin posted three assists against Windham/Westbrook.

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“He’s been huge, and he’s been doing this his whole career,” Mt. Ararat coach A.J. Kavanaugh said. “We’ve gone through a ton of injuries, but he’s been the one constant. He’s just sturdy. It seems like whatever we need, he does for us.”

Austin led a 2 on 1 from the right side, electing to shoot from the near faceoff dot, to open the scoring and then intercepted a sloppy Cony clearing pass in the middle of the zone en route to his second goal.

He put the game away with two goals just six seconds part in the first 25 seconds of the third period, turning a 2-0 game into a 4-0 blowout.

“I was just in the right position tonight, and couple of my goals were on turnovers,” Austin said. “It’s finding the open guy when I have the puck, and if they give it to me I just try to finish for them.

NO GOAL: Cony thought it had pulled to within 2-1 in the final minute of the second period, but an apparent Avery Pomerleau goal into an empty net was waved off while the Rams were shorthanded.

Charron came all the way out to his own blue line to try and play a loose puck when he and Cony forward Zach Whitney made contact, sending both players sprawling to the ice. Pomerleau collected the puck and fired into an empty net.

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The play was soon waved off, however, when it was ruled that Whitney was in an offsides position.

DECISIONS, DECISIONS: Poor decision-making was the theme of the night for Cony, especially in the second period.

“We weren’t ready to play,” Cony coach Chad Foye said. “We’ve played bad periods this year, but never three of them in a row like that.”

The Rams seemed to struggle with finding the right pass, moving the puck quickly enough when in possession and with ill-advised pinches from defensemen at the offensive blue line. It all added up to a much better breakout for Mt. Ararat, which scored twice in a span of 2:42 to take a 2-0 lead.

STREAKS: Tired legs were no match for a Mt. Ararat team that wanted to extend its winning streak to four games.

“Winning streaks and feeling good about the way we’re playing has a lot to do with that,” Kavanaugh said. “Playing on adrenaline was very clear. To come back in less than 24 hours to the same building and weather the storm of playing higher competition, it was evident.”

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The loss snapped Cony’s unbeaten streak at seven games (6-0-1), which included a 5-2 win over Mt. Ararat on Jan. 10.

“We just had to work hard. We knew that this was a good team, and we had to keep it going,” Austin said. “One of the focuses was trying to get pucks out of the zone quick. We’ve had trouble with turnovers in our zone that cause goals — which is what happened last time, they scored three goals in 1:30. That was a killer, but we executed our plan and things worked out well.”

STANDINGS: Mt. Ararat entered the night seventh in Class A North, one spot out of the final playoff position. The win over the Rams should be enough to — if only temporarily — leapfrog the Eagles to No. 6, ahead of Poland/Gray-New Gloucester/Oak Hill/Leavitt.

Cony, meanwhile, entered the night fifth — with the thick of its schedule coming down the stretch run of the regular season. Five of Cony’s final six games are against teams ahead of it in the standings.

Travis Barrett — 621-5621

tbarrett@centralmaine.com

Twitter: @TBarrettGWC


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