Telegraph photo by TOM KING Manchester Central-West goalie Donnie Collins keeps his eye on the puck despite the pressure from Bishop Guertin's Dan Woodford, left, and Avery Abbott during the Cardinals' 13-0 win at Manchester's JFK Coliseum on Thursday.

MANCHESTER – There will a rough, long, full intersquad scrimmage for the Bishop Guertin High School boys hockey team today.

Why? Because, as was pretty much expected, the Manchester Central-West co-op offered little in terms of competition in a 13-0 Cardinals rout Thursday at JFK Coliseum.

Save the tape, and the combined Little Green-Blue Knights can show the New Hampshire Interscholastic Athletic Association how foolish it would be to deny their certain request to drop down at least a division for next year – a request that word is has been denied in the past.

But the Cards certainly have bigger fish to fry in the next week – at Hanover on Saturday and at Bedford next Wednesday – and this offered little in terms of a warmup. If the final score doesn’t tell you that, the 62-8 shot differential will. BG’s Chris Sullivan had eight saves for the shutout, while Central netminders Donnie Collins and David Hood combined for 49 stops.

“In a game like this you want to move th puck,” Guertin coach Gary Bishop said. “I’m not looking for one kid to skate through five guys. Get the puck moving, do all the correct things that you’re going to have to do Saturday at Hanover and Wednesday with Bedford. You’re not going to do it alone against those two teams.”

The scoring? Bishop Guertin’s Patrick Madden had a hat trick plus an assist, while Declan Wilkie added two goals. Single goal scorers were Avery Abbott, Ben Young (plus two assists), Dan Woodford, Matt Zeichick, Max Trawick, Aaron Pratt, Sean Kelley and Mike Kiely.

Mike Schaaf had three assists, and besides Young’s two assists, others with multiple assists were Kiely, Trawick, Sam Cronin and Derek Amaral (two each). To demonstrate the puck movement, there was a total of 22 assists.

Bishop feels he knows a lot about his team already, after it’s won two of three regular season games and went 1-2 in the recent Mount St. Charles holiday tourney in Woonsocket, R.I.

“I like our depth,” he said. “We’ve been real happy with our goaltending so far – Sullivan and Evan Butler, and they’ve both played really well so far. They’re both fighting for it.

“And we’ve got four lines that we’ve rolled regularly. Keep those bodies coming.”

But not games like this, as the entire third period was played under running time.

“I don’t like scoring more than 10 goals against anybody,” Bishop said. “I want everybody to keep going. The last thing you want is some of these kids going ‘I’m not going to play anymore, this is no fun.’

“So (today) we’ll divide it up two teams, two lines, four ‘D’ on each team and let them go at it and keep score, so we can play at the level we’re going to have to play Saturday.”

The Cardinal players feel they’ve started the season in pretty good form.

“I think we’ve been playing pretty good so far,” Woodford said. “We’ve just got to keep working hard in practice and get better every day.”

Central-West will try to do the same thing, and hopefully the NHIAA will better itself and the sport by allowing the co-op to drop down.

The tape doesn’t lie

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