AMHERST — After a tight 2-1 contest the first time Belchertown and Greenfield met this season, most fans expected a similar low-scoring contest when they met again.

Instead, Greenfield’s offense found its scoring touch and Green Wave goalie Joshua Bordeaux posted a 22 save shutout in a 7-0 Greenfield victory.

“It was definitely a relief. You can never really be certain that you got it until it’s over,” Bordeaux said on his second shutout of the season. “As a team, we all came into the game feeling better. The first time we played them was early on in the season, and we didn’t really have the chemistry we had. But tonight we executed and scored a lot of goals and I did my job back there.”

Greenfield bookended the first period with a pair of goals, the first coming less than five minutes into the opening frame. Shawn Beckwith sent a short pass over to Jake Jurek, who skated up the left wing and sent a wrister soaring past Curtis Wojnas to make it 1-0 Green Wave. Greenfield doubled its lead with a sudden goal from Beckwith, who ripped it from inside the left circle past Wojnas with 40 seconds left in the first.

Up 2-0 going into the second period, there was still plenty of time for the Orioles to come back, but the team took an untimely major penalty five minutes into the middle frame. With Francis Henderson in the box for a hit to the head, the Belchertown penalty kill managed to stave them off for just over four minutes, but Matt Lavoine finished off a patient pass from Hunter Smith to give Greenfield a 3-0 lead with just under a minute left on the power play.

“Scoring that third goal, five and a half minutes into the second was a big momentum builder that we felt. A two-goal hockey game is a really difficult game to defend, a lot of momentum can happen. 3-0 is a lot different than 2-1,” Greenfield head coach Adam Bouchard said. “So we were lucky to bury that third goal. We continued just to ride that wave through.”

The penalty was a huge momentum killer for the Orioles, who had been buzzing at the beginning of the second period, outshooting Greenfield 10-5 through the first 18 minutes of the contest. By the end of the second period, it was the Green Wave who had a 25-14 edge in shots. The Orioles entered the second intermission down 4-0, still not entirely out of the game, but the Green Wave scored a pair of goals from Smith and Lavoine 25 seconds apart in the opening minutes of the third to make it 6-0 and put the game much further out of reach. Sammy Knight scored the seventh and final goal for the Green Wave to ice the game for the visitors.

Penalties were a huge deterrent for the Orioles, who couldn’t really get their offense going after a strong first period led by the starting line of Henderson, Ryan Fernandes and Cody Sampson. Whenever Belchertown looked like they might get something going, another whistle blew and sent the Orioles back on the penalty kill; the home team took seven penalties total, five of those coming in the third period.

“It really takes you out of your rhythm and now some guys aren’t playing. We need our third line to give us a little bit of a spark and a jump, dump the puck in deep and get a big hit and maybe create a scoring opportunity,” Belchertown head coach Derek Chandonnet said. “So that was really the turning point in the game. It gets to be a mentality thing.”

The Orioles will look to bounce back against Mount Everett on Saturday at 6 pm, while Greenfield will face off against Assabet Valley Regional Tech at 4:30 on Saturday.

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