On the last day before the long winter weekend break the boys J.V. hockey team travelled to Canaan N.H. to take on The Cardigan Mountain School. Cardigan always presents a challenge and this year would be no different. After the two + hours bus ride the team quickly warmed up and prepared themselves to play. The first period was sluggish on our end as Cardigan peppered goalie Will Scharfenberger with shots creating a number of good scoring opportunities. Will kept his team in the game early only allowing one goal in the first period.
At the start of the second Cardigan continued to buzz their visitors and at the three minute mark they scored their second goal of the game making the score 2-0. It wasn’t until halfway through the period after watching defenseman George Darling body-checking everyone in sight, that Big Green came to life. From this point on we began to play our style of game – getting the puck deep and pinning our opponent back in their zone. In the waning minutes of the second period our Green Line of Sotirhos, Rockefeller, and Navab led the way with hard work down low and sending the message to our hosts we weren’t going away quietly.
In the third period Scharfenberger continued to do his part and the defensive corp. of Darling, Gisonni, Belaire, and Morsmann played their best period on the day. The Green Line led the charge in the offensive end and with three and a half minutes in to the period it was Alex Sotirhos who finally got Deerfield on the scoreboard. Credit now goes to the Cardigan goalie as all three lines for Deerfield applied intense pressure around the Cardigan net. Deerfield couldn’t get the equalizer in spite of numerous quality chances. With under 30 seconds remaining in the game we were able to pull the goalie and send an extra skater to the offensive end of the ice for the final push. That extra skater, skating with that Green Line, was Will Lodge who with 0:13 left scored the equalizer off an assist from Ben Gisonni.
After a heart-stopping 5 minute overtime the game came to and end at 2-2. We go on long winter weekend and when we return we play our remaining 8 games. We currently stand at 7-0-1 and our next opponent will be Loomis @ Loomis on February 9th. The team will come back from the break at full-strength for the first time since the New Year’s break!