PLYMOUTH – They couldn’t cash their checks.
The No. 2 Hollis-Brookline/Derryfield Warriors had no problem being physical against the younger, smaller No. 3 Bulldogs from Belmont-Gilford in the NHIAA Division III hockey semifinals on Wednesday night at Plymouth State’s Hanaway Rink.
The problem was they couldn’t cash in on all the chances that edge gave them, thwarted time and time again by Bulldog sophomore goalie Colin Logan in a 2-1 loss that sent B-G to the D-III championship game for the first time since 2016.
“We had our opportunities,” HBDS coach Joel Sanborn said. “We just couldn’t put the puck in the net.”
Save for a Jacob Roy game-tying breakaway goal late in the first period, the Warriors were simply stonewalled time and time again by a steady goaltender.
“Isn’t he unreal?” Bulldogs coach Jason Parent said of Logan. “He’s a great kid, too. Stands on his head every time.”
It wasn’t supposed to be this way for the Warriors (16-4-0), who were determined all year to follow the gritty path to the finals, where they lost last year to Berlin-Gorham. They wanted that rematch, and the Mountaineers (19-1-0) took care of their end with a 4-1 win over Lebanon-Stevens-Mount Royal in the earlier semi.
But the Warriors, despite dominating the second period, and pumping 34 shots on Logan overall, weren’t able to join the title game party. That will be B-G’s honor, a rematch of the 2016 finals won by Berlin, on Saturday at 12:15 p.m. at SNHU Arena in Manchester.
“Maybe we focused on Berlin too much; we should’ve focused on (the other) B-G,” Sanborn said with a chuckle. “You’ve got to take them one at a time, right?”
And one period at a time.
The Warriors simply owned the second, keeping the puck in the B-G zone for a good chunk of time. But as Sanborn said, “You’ve got to make your opportunities count when you get there, right? We had a couple of really good chances down here in the second period.”
“The second period was about us being in the box,” Parent added. “When you have your top defenseman in the box for four minutes, you have to play guys who normally don’t play as much; other guys get tired. We’re also a smaller team, a younger team, freshmen and sophomores, a lot of our guys. That physicality can get to you a little bit. I thought they did a good job staving it off and surviving.”
And then got rewarded in the third with the winning goal when senior Dylan Flannery poked home a rebound of a Owen Guerin shot from the point at just 1:39 of the third.
“Hey, you know we work on that drill all week in practice,” Parent said. “Pucks to the net, find the puck and tap it in. We do it all the time. … We buried the ones that count.”
“The goal at the beginning of the third had eyes,” Sanborn said. “In a game like this, those are the goals that are going to get you, the dirty ones.”
The other one that counted came in the first period when B-G (16-4-0) did its best skating, as sophomore Aiden Mckenzie redirected Evan Guerin’s blast from the right wing at 10:35 for a 1-0 lead. But two minutes later, a slow pass was intercepted at the blue line and Roy skated all the way down and beat Logan to tie the game.
No one would have thought, especially watching that second period, that the Warriors would not score again.
And when HBDS pulled goalie Cavin Quinn (23 stops) for the final minute-plus, they either couldn’t get the puck past Logan or couldn’t reach him.
“We had some huge blocks in the third period, diving out there,” Parent said. “That’s what the game’s about, right?
“They’ve got a good little goalie over there,” Sanborn said.
Who came up pretty big.