BOSTON — It was not the ending Tewksbury High planned.
The plan was to win its second state championship in three years and that came to a crushing halt when No. 11 seed Boston Latin scored three goals in a 2:55 span – starting with 4:55 to go in the third period – to come away with a shocking 4-2 boys hockey victory over the No. 1 seed Redmen late Sunday night at the TD Garden.
Scheduled for a 7:30 p.m. start, the Div. 2 championship game didn’t get begin until 9:37 and ended 90 minutes later with the Redmen devastated.
“I think if that puck that was at the goal line was hit in, it’s game over and we’re not sad right now,” said Redmen head coach Derek Doherty. “Right after that, it was the start of their four minutes of them rolling and us not. I thought the kids played hard, they played hard. It’s just unfortunate.”
Doherty was referring to an almost goal by Tewksbury which would given the Redmen a 3-1 lead in the third period.
Tewksbury had defeated its Merrimack Valley Conference/Dual County League Division 2 league rivals twice during the regular season by 5-1 and 5-2 scores.
“They definitely clogged the middle of the ice for sure, especially in the defensive zone. It was tough for us to get pucks to the net. They definitely did a good job of trying to shut down our first line. We did have our chances, but in the end, they had a great four-minute (span) and they won the game,” said Doherty.
Tewksbury (21-4-0) led 2-1 and with under six minutes left in the game, Tyler Bourgea went through two defensemen and his shot went off goalie Oliver Murphy and rolled through the crease untouched for several seconds. Two Tewksbury sticks took a swipe at it, but missed.
Forty seconds later, Boston Latin (17-8-0) tied the game up.
A minute and six seconds later came the game winner.
A minute and forty-nine seconds later was the insurance goal.
“All year we have been a third-period team,” said Boston Latin head coach Frank Woods. “We have played in a lot of tight games. We are just comfortable playing in those tight games. We needed to be tight with these guys in the third period, otherwise we had no chance. They could have knocked us out in the first period and the game would have been over. It’s a powerful team. We were able to hang around and stay with it. We just needed a bounce and we got that going (with five minutes left in the game).”
Tewksbury took a 1-0 lead just 3:01 into the first period. Jeremy Insogna came flying into the middle of the Wolfpack zone and quickly dished the puck off to his left. Matt Cooke one-timed a shot to the far side. Neither team had any legitimate scoring chances the rest of the way, both having a power play chance.
Cooke scored his 26th goal of the season and second in the game just 2:04 into the second period. On a faceoff to the right of Boston Latin goalie Oliver Murphy, Insogna pushed the puck to his right, and Cooke scooped it up, circled to his right, before letting go a wrist shot over the glove hand to make it 2-0.
Boston Latin was able to cut the deficit in half coming with 6:24 left in the second. A Tewksbury defenseman had the puck in the right hand corner and misfired trying to make a pass. The puck landed on the stick of Tristan Speiss, who put a quick wrist shot, which was kicked out by the right pad of goalie David Karlberg, but Ryan McHugh came in off the opposite post to drive home the rebound for his fourth goal of the season to make it a 2-1 game.
That set things up for Latin’s dominating third period, scoring three goals in a 2:55 span. William Cunniffe tied the game when he tipped home a shot taken by Ryan McHugh from the right circle with 4:55 to go, followed by goals from Aidan Fitzpatrick and Matt Carrara.
“I’m proud of the kids. They worked hard all year. It’s so hard to get here. We were lucky enough to do it this year and then two years ago,” said Doherty.
