Stone Bridge Hockey Falls in OT

By Jeff Nelson

Wednesday, February 25, 2009

With sticks dropped on the ice, gloves thrown in the air and sophomore Alex Guerere getting buried underneath his O'Connell teammates, the postgame celebration at Ashburn Ice Arena Tuesday night resembled a scene typically reserved for championship games.

For the seventh-ranked Knights, that's how it felt after their 4-3 overtime victory over top-ranked Stone Bridge in the Northern Virginia Scholastic Hockey League semifinals.

"Stone Bridge, they always win these games," said Guerere, who scored the game-winner with 57 seconds remaining in the five minute extra period. "It's good for one team to finally beat them."

O'Connell snapped the Bulldogs' 20-game winning streak and prevented the defending champions from reaching their fourth straight title game. The Knights (15-6-1) also avenged a 3-2 defeat to Stone Bridge (11-1) earlier this season and moved within one win of the program's first championship in any league.

"We've got to remember this isn't the championship," said senior Doug Page, who made 26 saves. "This is just a step. The championship is Friday."

The Knights trailed Stone Bridge 2-1 after one period, and appeared to be in trouble in the second period when they got back-to-back penalties of four and five minutes. But the Bulldogs quickly bailed out the Knights with several penalties of their own.

In all, Stone Bridge sent seven men to the box in the second period and O'Connell sent five.

"We had our chances in the second period," Bulldogs Coach John Lynch said, "and we lost our cool a little bit. We should have put it away when we had our chances."

With a power play at the end of the period, O'Connell tied the score on Patrick Thompson's goal.

In front of a tense, sometimes contentious crowd that filled the stands and lined the rink, both teams thrilled their fans toward the end of regulation. First, the Knights took the lead when senior Nick Guerere scored on a rebound off of his younger brother's shot with 3 minutes 48 seconds remaining. Then the Bulldogs took advantage of an O'Connell penalty with Andrew Ansell's goal at the two-minute mark.

A back-and-forth overtime finally ended when the puck squirted into Stone Bridge's zone and Alex Guerere corralled it with two strides on the nearest defender. He skated in and flicked a wrist shot between the legs of the Bulldogs' goaltender, sending the Knights into a frenzy, which he couldn't see from the wrong end of a pile.

"I couldn't even breathe on the bottom," Guerere said. "It was a great feeling."

Notes: O'Connell will face Forest Park, a 3-1 winner over Herndon Wednesday, in the NVSHL title game at the Kettler Capitals Iceplex in Ballston on Friday. ... The last two times Stone Bridge entered the playoffs undefeated (2006 and 2007), it lost in the championship game.

Extra Points

By Paul Tenorio and Matt Brooks