New Haven Register (New Haven, CT)
North Haven advances to a fourth consecutive conference title game
WEST HAVEN — Over the last four years, North Haven has felt its rightful place is in the Southern Connecticut Conference/SouthWest Conference Division II championship game.
The top-seeded Nighthawks made it four years in a row Wednesday night by hanging on for a 5-4 victory over fourth-seeded Guilford in the SCC/SWC semifinals at Bennett Rink. North Haven (19-2) will play second-seeded WatertownPomperaug (10-8-3), which knocked off Branford, 4-2, in the Division II league championship game at 8 p.m. Friday, also at Bennett Rink.
“These seniors this is the only game they know,” North Haven coach Chris Avena said. “They’ve been in it four years straight. We lost to Branford the first year, but we won it in the Covid-shortened year and won it last year. Now we’re in it again. It feels like home to us.”
North Haven dominated the game in the first period by outshooting Guilford, 15-6, and it was its first line of Will Sullivan, Alex Peterson and Tommy Guidone doing the damage. Sullivan contributed a pair of goals and Peterson the other as the Nighthawks took a 3-1 lead after the first 15 minutes.
“We had good shots, a lot of traffic in front and got the rebounds,” Sullivan said. “I’m lucky to play with two good forwards in Alex and Tommy got me the puck.”
William Patrick had the lone Guilford goal of the first period.
“We talked (after the first period) about limiting the mistakes we made and tried to stay the course, get it back on track and play to our strength,” Guilford coach Ralph Russo said.
But North Haven extended early in the second period as Sullivan
completed his hat trick with his third goal of the night, while Peterson added his second goal of the game to make it 5-1 just 3:14 into the second period.
But penalties killed North Haven’s momentum in the final 11:15 of the second period. The Nighthawks were whistled for 10 minutes of penalties, including a pair with 9:27 remaining in the period.
The Grizzlies took advantage of the 5-on-3 with Nathan Ponzio scoring with four seconds left in the penalties.
“We would have liked to get a second goal,” Russo said. “They are a good team. Just because you get the power play doesn’t automatically mean you’re going to get one.”
Guilford’s Logan Bertrand pulled Guilford to within 5-3 with 2:59 remaining in the second period when he whacked in a rebound past North Haven goalie Bryce Pedersen.
“We took too many penalties tonight and they capitalized on power plays,” Sullivan said. “We got refocused after the second were able to hold on to win.”
Brady Raffone got the Grizzlies within a goal with 3:41 left in the third period when Jacob Corso fed him in front of Pedersen with a perfect pass from behind the net and he put it in the net.
“The message tonight was we were down a lot, but we didn’t give up,” Russo said. “We would have liked to get a couple more goals, but we could have prevented it with a little more heads-up defense.”
North Haven survived when Guilford pulled goalie Sean McSweet with just under a minute left and the Grizzlies never got a shot off.
“I was concerned when it was 5-2, 5-3 and then 5-4 as we saw the momentum switch,” Avena said. “They had about four of them and we couldn’t recover. We were able to fend them off, but just barely, and we are very fortunate to be playing on Friday night.”
Watertown-Pomperaug Branford 2:
4, Jack Mulhall scored twice and added an assist as second-seeded Watertown-Pomperaug knocked off third-seeded Branford, 4-2.
Watertown-Pomperaug took a 2-0 lead into the third period where Branford got a pair of goals from Matthew Morgan. However, Griffin Nemoto and Shane Repetto scored in the third for Watertown-Pomperaug to them it the win.