Burrillville returning to Brown
Boys squad recovers from one-goal deficit to win
BURRILLVILLE – The challenge was very simple for the Burrillville boys hockey team if the No. 1 Broncos wanted to get back to Brown University’s Meehan Auditorium for the third straight season.
After scoring just five goals – and one was an empty-netter – in the first two games of their Division I semifinal series against No. 4 Cranston Co-op, the Broncos had to find a way to put shots past all-division goalie Darren DeAngelis.
For the first half of Monday’s game at levy Rink, the Broncos failed to truly test the Falcon. That changed 6 minutes, 20 seconds into the second period, when Matt Bianco scored a power-play goal to tie the contest. Leading scorer Tyler Gustafson, Elliot Lafond and Kyle Pelletier would go on to add goals to lead the Broncos to a 4-1 victory and a spot in the final opposite Prout.
“The message was that we have to get traffic in front of their goalie,” Burrillville coach Bill Robinson said. “We had to stop him from controlling the game. He still did a good job doing that. That kid’s one hell of a goaltender, but we finally got to him and we got a couple of goals on him. We just had to keep pouring it on.”
“At the start of the playoffs we knew we wanted to get back to Brown and we wanted to keep playing and trying hard,” senior goalie Bryan McConnell said after earning his second win of the season. “It’s a great feeling to get a chance to go back on that ice (at Brown).”
Cranston, which forced Game 3 with a 2-1 victory Saturday night, actually opened the scoring with 4:34 left in the opening period when Justin Neary found Jake Drohen for a power-play goal. The teams combined for 15 penalties in a game where it was clear the squads were sick of seeing each other after playing three games in four nights.
DeAngelis kept his squad in front until the Broncos grabbed a power-play goal of their own 6:20 into the second period. Good work in the offensive zone from Sam Hetu and Aidan Tupper created a goal for Bianco.
“We just stayed focused and stuck to the system and we trusted our boys,” Bianco said. “That goal really changed the tide around because they had the momentum after they scored, but we got it with that goal.”
Burrillville grabbed a lead it would never relinquish at 10:12 of the period when Colin McCarthy played a perfect stretch pass from inside his own zone to the Cranston blue line. Gustafson skated on to the pass and found a way past DeAngelis.
“McCarthy’s pass was unbelievable and we’ve been telling the kids their goalie has a vacuum for a glove,” Robinson said. “You have to beat him blocker low side and Gus beat him blocker low side. Hats off to that kid because he’s good.”
Robinson said he wasn’t comfortable in the third period with a one-goal lead because Neary and the Falcons continued to press and they continued to fly the zone in the hope of catching the Broncos out of position.
McConnell, who made 16 saves, kept his team in the lead before Lafond put the game away with a superb solo goal with just 2:24 left. Lafond won a face-off at the right circle, regained control of the puck and slotted a shot past DeAngelis.
The Broncos added another goal with 40 seconds left when Bianco fed Pelletier for a short-handed goal with DeAngelis pulled.
“We knew we needed to be mentally prepared coming into this game because we weren’t ready for Game 2 and we were fooling around a bit,” Bianco said. “We were focused and mentally ready for this game.”