Coach John Blake’s DHS boys’ hockey team ran its unbeaten streak to nine games on Saturday night at The Bog, qualifying the Dragons for the EMass Division 1 tournament with a 3-1 win over Scituate.

The victory puts Duxbury’s record at 9-1-4 with eight games left on the regular season schedule that continues on Wednesday night when the Dragons travel to Quincy.

The Dragons have had their troubles scoring on their home rink this season.  But it didn’t seem to be a problem in the opening period, when junior Shayne O’Brien gathered in a clearing pass off the left boards and bore down on Scituate goaltender Matt Gentile before wristing his shot into the top right-hand corner for a 1-0 lead in the first two minutes of the game.

The quick lead didn’t seem to fire up the Dragons, as they couldn’t dent the Sailor net. With less than a minute to go in the period junior forward Matt Saia slid a beautiful pass across the crease to classmate Matt Murphy, who fired his shot into the top left corner past Gentile for a 2-0 lead.

It didn’t take long for Duxbury to get its motors running in the second stanza when Saia came down the right side on a 2-on-1 break and looked to his left freezing Gentile with uncertainty. The Scituate goaltender guessed wrong and Saia went top left corner to give the Dragons a commanding 3-0 lead two minutes into the period.

Duxbury’s comfortable three-goal margin was in jeopardy just two minutes later when Scituate had a two-man advantage on the power-play for 24 seconds. The Dragons would hold the visitors scoreless and would kill off another power-play before the period ended.

With just 15 minutes left to play, the Sailors needed to get on the board and they did with 10:03 remaining when a scramble in front of Duxbury goaltender Chris Johnson produced a shot that just found its way inside the left post to make it 3-1.

Both teams survived man-down situations in the final seven minutes and Scituate pulled its goalie with 57 second left in the contest. The move proved fruitless, as the Dragons played solid defense in front of Johnson and skated away with the win.

“We still need to play a complete game for 45 minutes,” said Blake. “Sometimes we take our foot off the gas and go in spurts. Tonight we got great play from our white line (Saia, O’Brien, Murphy). Those guys just execute all the little things. They are disciplined, work hard, and they got the job done tonight.”

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