The final scored was 7-0, but the magic number for Saturday night’s Division I boys’ hockey championship was two. Twin brothers Noah and Zach Drew both scored two goals in the first period against Salem, and the Concord boys’ hockey team won a second straight title. Hammering the point home was the number on the back of Zach Drew’s jersey – 22.
“It’s crazy,” Noah Drew said, “you couldn’t write it any better.”
A crazy final was the only way to end a crazy year for the Crimson Tide. Concord reached the championship game last season only to have it canceled due to the coronavirus pandemic on March 13, 2020, the day before it was scheduled to be played. The Tide were named 2020 co-champion along with Bedford (the other team that qualified for last year’s final), so that made Saturday night’s title, won on March 13, 2021, two in a row for the Tide, but the players really wanted to win it on the ice this season.
“We want to win this year to prove we could last year,” Concord’s junior captain Ryan Philbrick said earlier this season. “I still don’t even know what to say about (last year), really. It was devastating. We’ve moved on, but we really want to win it this year. It kind of makes this year more important.”
That mission was delayed as soon as it started when the Concord School Board put all athletics in the district on pause for two weeks one day into the 2020-21 winter season as virus numbers in the area increased. That pause ended in time for the Tide to start the regular season as scheduled, but after playing six games Concord had to take another two-week break with more COVID-19 issues, this time specifically related to the team.
“Our start of the year was rough,” Zach Drew said. “We had a couple of cancellations and we got kind of scared, but we pulled together as a team and said no more going out at all, stick to the rules, and we got through it.”
Their reward for pulling together and getting through it was the 10th boys’ hockey title in school history, the first won on the ice since 2010, and a police escort down Main St. when they arrived back in Concord from JFK Memorial Coliseum in Manchester.
“Our kids played great tonight,” Tide coach Dunc Walsh said. “I can’t say enough about our team and the way we persevered through this season, and all the kids and all the teams did. So, I thank the NHIAA and our school board and our administration for letting this happen, because there was a lot of uncertainty.”
There wasn’t much uncertainty once the puck dropped in the final. Salem came in as the only D-I team with one loss and was riding the momentum from its 2-1 overtime win against Bedford in the semifinals, but Concord (16-2-0) was all over the Blue Devils (14-2-0) from the start. It took just 2:23 for the Tide to grab a 1-0 lead after Colin O’Brien fed Philbrick, who fired a shot from the right point, and Zach Drew, camped on the left post, tipped it home.
“I didn’t really see it that well,” Drew said, “but I managed to get a stick on it.”
A little more than six minutes later, Noah Drew doubled Concord’s lead when he scored from the right post, connecting on a one-time shot as his skates were slipping in the opposite direction.
“It was a good pass from my teammate Joey (Ala), he was looking for me in front of the net,” Noah Drew said. “I was falling as I shot it, but it worked out.”
Zach Drew made it 3-0 less than a minute later when he beat Salem goalie Spencer Deane (27 saves) blocker side on an assist from Jack Shoemaker (two assists). And Noah Drew pushed it 4-0 on a slick transition goal with just 14 seconds left in the period, assisted by junior Parker Fredrickson (goal, two assists).
“We were pretty happy going into the locker room after the first period,” Noah Drew said, “but we knew we had to keep it under wraps, keep pucks deep, keep the pressure up and not let it get to our heads. This is the state final, we got to keep it going.”
They did just that. No matter which forward line or D pairing was on the ice, the Tide never stopped buzzing and looked quicker to every loose puck, a display of the depth that has been Concord’s strength all season.
Yes, the 100-point scoring Philbrick is a transcendent talent who will go down as one of the school’s all-time greats, and sophomore Brooks Craigue can take over games with his speed, skill and tenacity, like he did with five points in the Tide’s quarterfinal win. But neither of them scored a goal last night and Concord still put seven on the board against a team that was allowing 1.43 goals per game before running into this Crimson-colored juggernaut. And goalie Kevin Jones, who was excellent in the Tide’s 4-1 semifinal win against Bishop Guertin, needed to stop just 10 shots to earn the championship shutout.
“It was such a long wait to get here, but we were confident,” Noah Drew said. “We knew they were good, but at the end of the day our team was better.”
Concord’s Tyler Coskren had the only second-period score on Saturday when he finished a ridiculous series of passes between Craigue and Philbrick with a tap-in goal. Senior captain Alex Forward, assisted by Shoemaker and Ala (three assists), and Fredrickson (assisted by Ala and Noah Drew) scored in the third period for the 7-0 final.
“Our kids were so ready and they were so motivated from last year,” Walsh said. “The parents were jokingly calling it, ‘Revenge Tour 2021,’ but it’s hard to get back here. Our kids were up for it and they came to play tonight, that’s for sure.”