Vikings stay unbeaten with win over Revere

REVERE – With a standing-room-only crowd on hand Wednesday at Cronin Arena, first place in the Northeastern Conference’s North Division was on the line as rivals Winthrop and Revere locked horns.And as they’ve done all season long, the Vikings hitched their wagon to goaltender Pat Feeley and a rock-solid defense, which led the way to a 2-0 win in enemy territory.”Our hallmark right now is our team defense,” Winthrop coach Dale Dunbar said. “When you have a goaltender like we have and a mobile defense that can get the puck out, that’s always a good thing.”With the win, Winthrop takes a huge step towards winning its first league title since the 2004 campaign. The Vikings are 11-0-1 in conference play, good enough for a three-point lead over Peabody.The Tanners and Winthrop meet next Wednesday in a game that could mean a league title for the Vikings, who must lose their last three in the conference to not get a piece of the crown.”Honestly, we’re just taking it one game at a time, but we know where we stand,” Dunbar said. “The thing that we have this year is depth.”The Patriots (10-2-3, 9-2-2 NEC North) saw their chances of a second league title in three seasons effectively disappear thanks to a pair of mistakes that turned into Winthrop goals.”They outplayed us. It’s as simple as that,” Revere coach Jim Palumbo said. “They capitalized on a couple of mistakes and never let us get near the net.”The first period was a back-and-forth affair that saw the Patriots fail to convert on a couple of power play chances. Even more damaging for Revere was a goal by Nick Adreani with 5:24 left that was called back on a quick whistle.”I would have liked to have seen what would have happened if that goal wasn’t called back,” Palumbo said. “Maybe it would have given us a bit of momentum.”In the final seconds of the period, Feeley came up huge, stopping Chris Mastropietro’s bid to finish an end-to-end rush with a spectacular goal.That save by Feeley to end the first seemed to give the Vikings life, as they came out and dominated the second period.After killing off an early penalty, Winthrop constantly harried Revere goaltender Nick DiMare, and it took several stellar saves by the senior to keep the game scoreless.But the law of averages finally caught up to Revere with 4:41 left in the second as third-liner Ken Hodgkins went to the net and was able to tap home a Chris LeBlanc rebound to give Winthrop the lead.”You want to come in with a road mentality,” Dunbar said. “You know it’s going to be a crazy crowd and we wanted to win the first period. But we came out and set the tempo in the second.”After killing off Revere’s fourth power play chance of the game late in the second, the Vikings’ third line struck again.LeBlanc fed Hodgkins at the Revere line, who in turn fed Rob Martino for a one-timer that beat DiMare to give Winthrop a 2-0 lead heading to the third.”After the first, we came in and thought that we were right in the game,” Palumbo said. “But in that second period, they came out and just stepped on us. They had one heck of a period.”In the third, the Winthrop defense showed why it’s allowed only 14 goals in 13 games, limiting Revere to only four shots on goal en route to preserving Feeley’s shutout.