Mar 13, 2008
Still the ones
New Canaan zips Cards for State title three-peat
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As the names of the starting players on the New Canaan High girls’ ice hockey team are being announced before playoff games, the Rams always stay back at the goal line with their teammates, rather than skating up to the blue line as is the typical practice.
It’s a show of solidarity for each other and the team, and it seems particularly fitting this year. They stand as a team, fight as a team and win as a team and that approach has served them well in overcoming the losses of some key players and maintaining their dynasty.
Oh, and by the way — it also helps to have a defender move up top and score her first two goals of the season in the State championship game.
Sophomore Maggie Burke was the player with the perfect timing Saturday morning at Yale’s Ingalls Rink, as she scored twice in a span of 1:55 in the second period, giving the Rams a lead they would not relinquish.
Goalie Charlotte Spitzfaden pitched her seventh shutout of the season and freshman Jana Persky scored an empty-net goal in the final half-minute as New Canaan blanked the Greenwich Cardinals 3-0 to win its third consecutive State championship.
For those who are counting, that’s six championships — three FCIAC and three State — in four years for the New Canaan Rams, but this one may have been even sweeter than the rest. There were many prognosicators who saw the Rams as ripe for the picking when the season started.
“I’ve never had more fun than with this group,” Head Coach Rich Bulan said. “They just go out every day and prove that everybody else is wrong and they are better than people think.
“We told them all year — why not us?”
The victory came just one week after a difficult 2-1 overtime loss to St. Joseph in the FCIAC final, an unexpected defeat which left many of the Rams in tears.
Rather than carrying that emotion into the State tournament which started two days later, New Canaan went on a winning streak, beating Hall/Conard 6-0 in last Monday’s first round and winning an epic battle over Guilford, 4-3 in five overtimes, last Wednesday.
Saturday’s final featured New Canaan and Greenwich in their third clash of the season, but the Rams had come up short of victory the first two times, first losing 4-2 to snap a 46-game winning streak and then tying the Cardinals 1-1 in a game the Rams felt they should have won.
“When we tied Greenwich, we felt like that was a loss,” Burke said. “We wanted to beat them and we definitely carried that in to today’s game. They were not going to beat us three times in a row and we were not going to take it lying down. Everybody knew coming into this game, we’re going to crush them, it’s what we came here to do.”
The pre-game message was a strong one from senior co-captain Annie Amrhein.
“We worked too hard to get here,” she said. “This was the last time I’m putting on the NC jersey, and I think we all had the mindset that we wanted to go out with a bang.”
The Rams came out flying but despite outshooting Greenwich 21-8 during the first two periods and 24-10 overall, New Canaan was kept off the board for the first 25 minutes thanks to some strong play by Cardinal goalie Addie McKeon (21 saves).
Greenwich got some life when Burke went to the penalty box at the 8:24 mark of the second frame, but the Rams did a great job on the penalty kill.
Junior co-captain Katie Durkin nearly scored short-handed when she slipped through the defense and fired a shot at McKeon, but the goalie made the stop.
Senior co-captain Amanda Alberston then took over as she pinned the puck against the boards behind the Greenwich net for nearly 30 seconds. When the Cards finally freed it up, Anjalie Christie intercepted a pass near the blue line and fired it back deep into the zone. Greenwich had no shots during the power play.
“We’ve been working on penalty kills all season,” Burke said. “You just really want to kill the time. Amanda, you could see her just fighting so hard in the corner just to possess it and have the puck. She was moving it back and forth and that’s exactly what we needed.”
After that, it was Burke’s time to shine. Having played forward as a freshman, Burke’s last goal had come in last year’s State final. She volunteered for a move to defense this season and had racked up 22 assists, but no goals.
Just 17 seconds after she came out of the penalty box, Burke picked the puck from a Cardinal, skated in toward the net, and flipped a back-hander past McKeon.
“All I was really thinking was get around the defenseman and get it in,” Burke said. “There’s really not much to it, you’ve just got to go for it and so I tired my best to do so. You get a shot on net and something’s bound to happen and something did.”
Burke followed that goal with a second tally during a New Canaan power play at 12:36. Albertson passed the puck from the right boards to Burke, who skated in through the right circle and sent a shot high for a 2-0 lead.
Burke nearly had a hat trick early in the third period when she broke up the right side and sent a shot to the far pipe. McKeon made a beautiful glove save on the shot to keep the deficit at two.
Spitzfaden made a great save of her own a few minutes later when she deflected a hard shot from the right circle by Greenwich’s Emily Ferguson.
McHugh and Brook Nordham then had a 2-on-1 breakr, but Greenwich was called for being offsides.
McKeon came up with a few more stops down the stretch to keep Greenwich within striking distance, but time was on the Rams’ side.
Greenwich pulled McKeon late to get an advantage and a checking penalty on New Canaan’s Annie Amrhein with 1:36 remaining made it a 6-on-4 advantage, but the Cards were unable to break through.
“It was nerve-wracking,” Amrhein said of the last couple of minutes. “I was trying to cheer everyone on like Durk with the faceoffs. There’s 1:36 left and anything can happen. When they pulled their goalie, it was 6-on-4 and that really adds a lot when you’re down in our defensive end.”
The Rams iced the game when freshman Jana Persky fought for the puck along the right boards, skated toward the blue line and slid a shot into the empty net with 25.1 seconds to play.
And with that, the Rams had their State championship three-peat.
“We just kept fighting and kept playing hard,” Amrhein said. “We didn’t want to give them a chance to think they could beat us. We were on a higher level today.”
© Copyright 2008 by Hersam Acorn Newspapers
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