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When Woodstock Academy junior Guerin Favreau rifled a laser beam into the top corner above the blocker of Suffield/Granby/Windsor Lock’s goalie Cam Begley with 1 minute, 18 seconds left in regulation, Kevin Bisson was pretty confident.
“It was the straw that broke the back. You could tell their will was broken,” the Woodstock Academy boys’ hockey coach said.
Just 45 seconds into overtime, Jake Starr scored the game-winner to give Woodstock Academy a 3-2 win Jan. 9 over the Tigers.
It completed a nice week for the Centaurs who also blanked the Lyman Hall/Coginchaug/Haddam-Killingworth cooperative earlier in the week, 4-0.
“We’re on a three-game win streak, it’s great,” Bisson said. “Three games with three goals against is really good. Colin (Liscomb) has been in goal for the last two and Josh (Lavitt) was in there for the 7-1 win (over Northeastern). We’re getting the goaltending, which I always felt good about it, but we’re also starting to get the defensive structure and support which is something that we’ve really put a major focus on.”
The two wins raised the Centaurs record to 5-3 overall and 2-2 in the Nutmeg Conference.
The SGWL cooperative took the early lead Jan. 9.
Aiden Grabowski scored with 4:12 left in the opening period on a 5-on-3 power play.
The Tigers followed with a second goal just a little over five minutes later off the stick of Remington Ferrari just 1:44 into the second period.
It held up and the Tigers took a two-goal lead into the third.
Favreau halved the Suffield lead 4:51 into the final period. Begley lost his stick and it got shuffled to behind the net.
Senior captain Doug Newton got on to the puck, flipped it to Favreau and the junior hammered it past a stick-less Begley.
Favreau then set the stage for Starr’s heroics when he beat Begley again with 1:18 left.
It was Favreau’s 15th goal of the season.
The Centaurs didn’t start the overtime with their top line.
With Kyle Brennan out of the lineup due to illness, Newton and Favreau were joined by Austen LeDonne on the first line.
Bisson rode the trio through much of the game and they were pretty well spent going into the extra period.
That meant Starr, Devin Chadwick and Nick Chubbuck took the first shift.
It was all the Centaurs needed.
The defense got the puck out of the Centaurs end and fed it to Chadwick who got it to Starr. Just as a line shift was about to occur, Starr made a play, cut across the middle, and fed the puck low to Begley’s blocker side, the puck found the back of the net.
It was Starr’s fifth goal of the season.
Jan. 8 the Centaurs scored all three goals within the first eight minutes of the first period. They protected that and shut out Lyman Hall cooperative program.
Bisson broke down the numbers for the team before the game: Among members of the Nutmeg Conference, the Centaurs were No. 1 in goals scored. They were also dead last in goals against.
“Those two things do not equal success,” Bisson said.
The Centaurs got a strong effort in the net from Colin Liscomb against Lyman Hall, but also limited their opponents scoring opportunities.
On the offensive side, Woodstock Academy had only five shots on goal in the first period but made three of them.
Favreau scored his 13th goal of the season just 3 minutes, 22 seconds into the game off assists from Newton and Brennan.
Newton tallied on a power play goal and followed that up with his fourth goal of the season, giving Woodstock Academy the 3-0 lead.
The game calmed down after that with the two teams skating even through the remainder of the first period, the entire second and most of the third, scoreless.
LeDonne broke the ice with a goal into an empty net with 44 seconds left to account for the final.
Marc Allard
Director of Sports Information
The Woodstock Academy
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