PLYMOUTH – There was less celebration and more focus going on in the locker room following the John Stark-Hopkinton hockey team’s 4-2 victory over Berlin on Wednesday night.
The defending champion and top-seeded General Hawks had just punched their ticket to the Division III title game for a second consecutive year, but had no interest in basking in the glory at Hanaway Rink on the campus of Plymouth State University.
“There is a comfort level and it’s very strange, the atmosphere in our locker room is very business-like,” John Stark-Hopkinton coach Denis Kolehmainen said. “When I was talking to them, they were dead stone silent. They’re not hooping and hollering. … We’re focused. We’re focused on where we want to go.”
Paul Molnar and Benny Madden each scored to help the General Hawks (19-1) seize an early 2-0 lead in the first period and senior netminder Jameson Bourque made 22 saves – eight in the final period – to send Stark-Hopkinton past No. 4 Berlin (13-7) and into Saturday’s final against No. 2 Monadnock-Fall Mountain at SNHU.
The Huskies (17-3) advanced after knocking off No. 3 Belmont-Gilford, 3-2, in the first semifinal.
“They’re a tough team so going into we knew we had to have our foot on the gas the whole time,” Bourque said of Berlin. “Going back (to the finals) is huge. We had six freshmen that joined the squad this year so to give them that experience this year is going to be huge for us.”
Madden opened the scoring 1:17 into the contest, firing a shot past Berlin’s Trent Labrecque (17 saves) on a breakaway chance off a feed from junior defenseman Carter Pike.
Molnar, Stark-Hopkinton’s dynamic senior forward and likely the last player Berlin wanted to see skating all by himself in their defensive zone, quickly put the Mountaineers in a 2-0 hole midway through the first period.
With no one but the goalie in front of him, Molnar caught Labrecque leaning the wrong way and wristed a shot in.
“It’s huge in a game like this where we know we had to jump out ahead of them and let (Berlin) try and catch up on us and have to take chances,” Kolehmainen said. “Us coming out flying and getting those two goals was huge. It takes a little pressure off us and the players can play a little looser.”
Stark-Hopkinton’s lead grew to 3-0 in the second after Brett Patnode dished a pass to sophomore Nolan Sauer from behind the net and Sauer jammed it in.
Berlin had it’s chances, though.
The Mountaineers had two power plays in the second period after penalties on Pike and Cabot Lineberry, but failed to score on either and finished the night 0-for-3 with a man advantage.
Berlin did however find the back of the net on an even-strength goal late in the second period from Tyler Rousseau and scored down a man when Rousseau made good on shorthanded goal in the early stages of the third.
But that wasn’t until after Stark-Hopkinton had scored its fourth goal of the game when Patnode scored from from the slot with 16.5 seconds remaining in the second period.
“We figured (Berlin) was the second-best team,” Kolehmainen said. “Our side of the bracket had some strong players that we had to go through, which helps us out coming into Saturday.”
There are backbreaking goals, and then there’s what happened to the Belmont-Gilford hockey team during the second period of Wednesday’s Division III semifinal.
Thinking they had just tied the contest against No. 2 Monadnock-Fall Mountain when Trevor Chassie tipped in a shot off a rebound, the Bulldogs instead were on the receiving end of some bad news.
The referees waved off the goal, whistling the play dead before Chassie’s shot went in. The Huskies won the ensuing faceoff, got Justin Joslyn the puck and watched him score on a breakaway goal that proved to be the difference in a 3-2 win over the Bulldogs.
“It’s a huge difference in the game,” said Belmont-Gilford coach Jason Parent, who guided the Bulldogs to a 14-6 season in his first year. “You go from the ultimate high in the world because you thought you just scored and the guy waved it off because he thought the goalie had (the puck) when he didn’t.
“You don’t expect that with three refs on the ice, but it is what it is and you hope they get the calls right,” Parent said. “Tonight they missed that one and it’s something we have to live with.”
The sequence was a two-goal swing and a monumental shift in a hard-fought contest between the Nos. 2 and 3 seeds.
“For us, it’s like stopping a rally in baseball,” Monadnock-Fall Mountain coach Steven Walsh said. “That right there took the wind out of their sails and we took the puck the other way and scored immediately.”
Junior forward Cam Jarvi accounted for both goals for the Bulldogs, including a key one off a rebound from Griffin Tondreau’s shot with 10:05 remaining in the contest that cut the lead to, 3-2.
The Huskies, though, held Belmont-Gilford to one shot in the final 1:36, playing keepaway to preserve their lead and make it to the finals.
“I couldn’t be more proud of the guys,” Parent said. “We started off really rough. We looked like a team that wasn’t even going to make the playoffs … But we played some good teams and beat some good teams. I think we deserved to be here and played a good game tonight.”
(Jay McAree can be reached at 369-3371, jmcaree@cmonitor.com or on Twitter @JayMcAree.)