Garden Bound: Icemen roll to D2 title game

Members of the CHS boys hockey team are all smiles after last weekend’s win over Westwood in the south sectional championship game. (Mike Barucci photo)

After a nine-year stretch that featured several deep playoff runs and a number of close-but-not-quite finishes, the Canton High boys ice hockey team is headed back to the Boston Garden with a chance to put a final exclamation point on one of the most dominant high school hockey seasons in recent memory.

Still unbeaten after 25 games (24-0-1) — and the only boys team in the state that can make that claim — the Bulldogs now have just one last test remaining as they get set to do battle with north champion Tewksbury in Sunday’s Division 2 state championship game. The upstart Redmen (17-4-3), somewhat of a surprise to come out of the north as a No. 7 seed, nonetheless earned their spot by virtue of beating a red-hot Boston Latin squad — the only team to battle Canton to a draw this season. (Canton would go on to win that game, unofficially, in a four-on-four overtime period).

Meanwhile, down in the south region, the heavily favored Bulldogs proved themselves worthy of the top seed and then some, tearing through the bracket en route to their first sectional crown since the state title-winning season of 2010. Along the way they reeled off four convincing wins, culminating with last weekend’s evisceration of fellow Ice House tenant Westwood in front of a packed crowd at Gallo Arena in Bourne.

The 8-0 victory, easily the most lopsided south final in more than a decade — perhaps ever — was every bit as convincing as the score would suggest. Canton jumped all over the Wolverines from the opening faceoff and never let up, coming at them in waves and completely overwhelming a team that had lost just once all season prior to Sunday.

Canton head coach Brian Shuman, who has been at the helm for some incredible Bulldog performances over the years, said the most recent win over Westwood ranks right up there among the best he has been a part of.

“It was a really impressive performance from start to finish, and probably one of the best games I’ve ever seen our team play,” said Shuman. “It’s just another example of how this team gets ready to play in big moments throughout the season.”

While acknowledging that the Wolverines did not have their best game on Sunday, Shuman said his team, in addition to being loaded with talent and well prepared for the rigors of the postseason, are just simply locked in at this point.

“The word I would use to describe them is relentless,” he said. “They just don’t stop; they don’t stop on offense and they don’t stop on defense. They play every single shift like it’s a nothing-nothing game. There’s just no let-up with this team, and I think it’s a tribute not only to their physical toughness but also their mental toughness.”

Against Westwood the Bulldogs set the tone right from the start as they dominated puck possession and peppered the Wolverine netminder with shots, cashing in on their first goal less than a minute into the contest on a wrister by junior defenseman Owen Lehane. Canton would go on to out-shoot Westwood 18-5 in the opening frame with senior captain Ryan Nolte adding a power play goal later in the period to give the Bulldogs a firm 2-0 lead.

Returning to the ice after intermission, Canton wasted little time as they blitzed the Wolverines with two quick goals in a 30-second span — one by junior captain Johnny Hagan off a pass from linemate Timmy Kelleher and another by senior Ryan Colby. From there they blew the game completely wide open, scoring twice more in the period on goals by Kelleher and junior Chris Lavoie. It marked the second straight game, and third in the last five, that Canton hung four second-period goals on an opponent, with the previous two resulting in 6-1 wins.

This time, the Bulldogs added two more goals for good measure in the third, with Kelleher knocking home a rebound off a Nolte shot for his second of the game and Tommy Vaughan redirecting an Eamon Kelly shot off his skate and into the net.

The Bulldog defensive corps also did their part as Canton recorded its third shutout of the postseason. Lehane in particular was a force while senior goalie and co-captain Mike Staffiere stopped every shot he faced, finishing with 19 saves. Shuman also made a point to single out the play of junior defenseman Ronan O’Mahony, who has been outstanding throughout the playoffs after a breakout regular season.

“He went from being our seventh or eighth defenseman to now being a top four defenseman who plays pretty much every other shift,” said Shuman. “He’s really stabilized the defensive unit and is sort of the unsung hero of our defense.”

Shuman had similar words of praise for forwards Colby and Shane Marshall, who do much of the “unheralded” work that doesn’t always show up on the stat sheet but is still critical to the team’s success. “Those guys have really stepped up their game in the playoffs and both have had really good games over these past two especially (against Norwood and Westwood),” he said.

In addition to getting contributions from key role players up and down the roster, the Bulldogs also happen to boast one of the most talented top forward lines in the state in Hagan, Nolte and Kelleher, and all three have been utterly brilliant throughout the playoffs — and all season for that matter. They owned every shift they skated against Westwood, and they will need to bring that same kind of intensity when they take on the Redmen at the Garden.

Shuman, for one, is expecting nothing less — not only out of his big guns but from the entire Canton team come Sunday.

“These guys are just so intrinsically motivated to play the best they can, and honestly everything else (including talk of a Super 8 snub) is now in the rearview mirror,” he said. “You hear a lot of teams talk about taking it one game at a time, and I think what you’re seeing is a team that actually does that, not just taking it one game at a time but one shift at a time.”

See this week’s Canton Citizen for additional photos from the D2 south finals. Subscribe today at www.thecantoncitizen.com/subscribe.

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