The puck eluded Justin Mele and went into the net. Bellmore-Merrick had sawed Long Beach\u2019s lead to one with 57.7 seconds left in Game 1 of the Nassau boys hockey finals, and the Marines\u2019 goalie was sweating over it.<\/p>\n
\u201cI was like, \u2018Oh, God, no. Please don\u2019t tell me we\u2019re going to overtime,\u2019 \u201d Mele said.<\/p>\n
But the second-seeded Marines held on in this Game 1, avoiding the same fate as last year against the same team. Mele made 20 saves, including 12 in the second period, and Luke Pichichero\u2019s third-period goal became the difference maker in a 3-2 win over top-seeded Bellmore-Merrick on\u00a0Monday night at Long Beach Municipal Ice Arena.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt means everything because being up 1-0 and having them have to come back, it\u2019s the best,\u201d Pichichero said after 16-2-1 Long Beach claimed its 12th straight victory. \u201cWhen we went down last year, I know how we felt, and it was a terrible feeling just knowing that we had to win two back to back.”<\/p>\n
Game 2 is at 8 p.m. Wednesday at Town of Oyster Bay Ice Skating Center in Bethpage.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s very important,\u201d Marines coach Rob Carson said of the 1-0 advantage, \u201cbut you can\u2019t get too comfortable because that\u2019s a very good team over there.\u201d<\/p>\n
That team dropped to 15-2-2.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s guys in that room that have been down 1-nothing on more than one occasion,\u201d Bulldogs coach Patrick Braglia said. \u201cSo adversity is not something that they\u2019re afraid of.<\/p>\n
\u201cNothing in life is easy. We embrace hard.\u201d<\/p>\n
Pichichero gave Long Beach a 3-1 lead with 8:05 left in the third period when he snapped the puck from the left circle.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was a great shot,\u201d Pichichero said.<\/p>\n
Bellmore-Merrick ultimately pulled goaltender Henry Lagalia late in the game for an extra skater and Jourdan Luskoff scored. But the Marines survived.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt feels amazing,\u201d Mele said, \u201cbecause you don\u2019t want to be down one game and have all the pressure on you in the next game.\u201d<\/p>\n
Michael Calvi provided Long Beach with a 1-0 edge in the first. Then Cody Pichichero, Luke\u2019s brother, scored in the second. Bellmore-Merrick’s Ryan Felsberg cut it to 2-1 before the game went to the third.<\/p>\n
The teams went 1-1-1 in the regular-season series. Long Beach drew confidence from the last two games, a tie and a win.<\/p>\n
\u201cJust knowing that you\u2019ve beaten this team and you\u2019ve tied them,\u201d Carson said, \u201cit was very big for the group going into this.\u201d<\/p>\n
\n\tBrian Heyman covers high school, college and pro sports. He joined\u00a0Newsday\u00a0in 2021 and previously worked as a sportswriter for The Journal News in White Plains and The Hudson Dispatch in Union City, New Jersey. His work has appeared in\u00a0The New York Times, MLB.com and Baseball Digest magazine.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The puck eluded Justin Mele and went into the net. Bellmore-Merrick had sawed Long Beach\u2019s lead to one…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":172041,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[951,34797,4629,131,133,132],"class_list":{"0":"post-172040","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-long-beach","8":"tag-high-school","9":"tag-hs-gamer","10":"tag-ice-hockey","11":"tag-long-beach","12":"tag-long-beach-headlines","13":"tag-long-beach-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/172040","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=172040"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/172040\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/172041"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=172040"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=172040"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=172040"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}