News Photo by James Andersen
Alpena’s Reid Meinhardt, left, is congratulated by teammate Anden Marecau after his first period goal during a game against Gaylord on Friday at Northern Lights Arena. Meinhardt and Marceau had two goals each and Jaden Marchlewski added one as Alpena won 8-0.
ALPENA — Offense just kept coming in waves for the Alpena High hockey team on Friday.
Buoyed by four goals in each of the first two periods, the Wildcats easily collected their 14th straight win after beating Gaylord 8-0 by mercy rule at Northern Lights Arena.
The Wildcats (18-2, 7-0 Big North Conference) have won three of their last four games by mercy rule.
Reid Meinhardt, Anden Marceau and Cam Young each had two goals for Alpena and Harrison Kaszubowski and Jaden Marchlewski added single tallies.
Young finished off the game with 13.2 seconds left in the second period, beating Gaylord goaltender Owen Corbin on a followup from a Marceau shot.
Alpena finished with 33 total shots on goal for the game, but got the job done with eight goals on their last 21 shots for an efficient victory.
Alpena previously defeated Gaylord by the same score on Wednesday.
With a 4-0 lead after one period, Alpena kept the pedal down in the middle frame and scored four goals on 15 shots.
Marceau made it 4-0 with his second goal after taking a perfectly placed pass from Trent Fraser early in the period.
Meinhardt quickly made it 5-0 on Alpena’s very next shot after burying a chance in the slot.
Marchlewski fired a hard shot past Corbin off a faceoff a short time later to put Alpena ahead 7-0 and Young finished the game off with just seconds left to play.
Alpena goaltender Aidan Schultz turned aside seven shots for the shutout and helped extend Alpena’s shutout streak to four games.
Since the beginning of the month, Alpena has allowed just three goals to opponents.
On a night when they donned purple jerseys for their annual Purple Game in support of all those affected in some way by cancer, the Wildcats kept Corbin busy from the get-go.
Alpena collected 12 shots on goal before it finally hit pay dirt and then proceeded to score four goals on seven shots.
Meinhardt kicked off the scoring, lighting the lamp on assists from Kaszubowski and Marceau with 9:06 left.
The goal came on Alpena’s 12th shot of the game and from there the floodgates opened.
Marceau outworked the defense and buried a 1-on-1 chance with 6:58 left.
Kaszubowski beat Corbin top shelf with 3:14 to go on assists from Meinhardt and Marceau.
Young buried a rebound with just over two minutes left in the opening frame, giving Alpena a 4-0 lead after capitalizing on a rebound from Jack Steinke.
Alpena is off until Friday, but faces a tough pair of games at a showcase in Trenton. Alpena will play Trenton on Friday in a showdown of two top-10 teams in Division 2 — Alpena is ranked second and Trenton is sixth.
The Wildcats will then play University Liggett — ranked eighth in Division 3 — on Saturday.
This story has been updated to reflect that Harrison Kaszubowski scored a goal for Alpena in its victory. This was incorrect in an earlier version of this story.
