Canton girls avenge last season’s loss to Algonquin
Reach Div. 2 state hockey semifinals
First-year Canton girls hockey coach Nikki Petrich didn’t have to imagine how badly her team wanted revenge over Algonquin for beating them in the Div. 2 state final at TD Garden last year. Leading up to a shot at redemption in the state quarterfinal round Thursday night, senior captain Ellie Bohane was quite vocal about its meaning. Mission accomplished. Carolyn Durand stood firm in net for a 21-save shutout as her and the Bulldogs defense limited one of the best goal-scorers in the state as best as a team could, propelling fourth-seeded Canton to a 3-0 win over the No. 5 Titans in front of a packed Canton Ice House crowd. Freshmen Izzy Cusack and Christina Curran each tallied scores before Audrey Koen’s empty-netter, giving the Bulldogs (18-2-4) all the offense they’d need to reach the state semifinals for a fifth time over the last six state tournaments.
They play top-seeded Archbishop Williams at 5:30 p.m. on Saturday at Gallo Arena for another shot at the state final.
“Being in the Boston Garden,
all I could remember feeling was the terrible feeling — crying, just knowing that we could have won the game,” Bohane said. “Getting to come back my senior year and take what they took from us, taking it away from them, (was) just really important. It’s just amazing because I remember thinking that if someone from the future could’ve came in and told me that, ‘You can get revenge on them next year, you get another chance to play them,’ I would’ve been so happy.”
Much of the offensive pressure in this one belonged to Canton early on, which accumulated a 16-6 shot advantage through the first 25 minutes of play. Algonquin’s defense did a good job of preventing quality shots off a bevy of passes to the middle from behind the net, and Kaitlin Mathews absorbed almost everything that got through in a 21-save night.
Just 3:08 into the second period, though, Cusack took a feed from Koen in front for the 1-0 lead. The Titans killed off two penalties through the rest of the period and found more offensive opportunities as the game progressed, but Curran found the puck in a scramble up the gut midway through the third to bury another goal for the 2-0 lead.
Heck of a time for your first goal of the season, which emphasized just how much depth came into play for Canton in the win. Every player got time on the ice.
“Throughout this playoff run, it’s been a blessing for our team to have so many different goal-scorers,” Petrich said. “Our first couple games in the playoffs, we’ve had defensemen score, we’ve had freshmen score — it’s been almost a different person every single night. … Depth is huge.”
Algonquin found bits and pieces of dangerous scoring chances in the meantime, mostly through star scorer Emily Johns. Canton emphasized keeping her wide to limit her, and even then, the junior still put six shots on net — three shorthanded.
None of them could get past Durand, though. Nor could the other nine shots the Titans ripped in the third period in hopes of a comeback.
Koen, another senior, put that to rest with the emptynetter.
“(Durand is) just calm under pressure,” said assistant coach Kevin Cleary. “She’s a great teammate, she stays focused. … Any type of breakdown, we have her to save us. We try to do our best to limit those, but man, having a goaltender like she — we’re lucky to have her.”