“I’ve only been here once before during my entire coaching career at Groton. Relish the chance to play for a championship tomorrow boys.”
We had just beaten Thayer in a shootout to advance to the finals of the annual Groton/Lawrence Hockey Tournament, where Holderness, the undefeated top-seeded team in all of New England Prep Hockey, awaited us. But while our minds were on tomorrow, we were curious: just what Groton hockey team was Coach Riley speaking about? We looked it up at a team dinner that night, and it turned out to be the 2012-2013 Groton BVH team that won the ISL Eberhart and featured future professional hockey player Michael Doherty. Not bad company to be in at all.
But, unfortunately, just like Mike Doherty’s team, we fell short in the finals. Skating against a Holderness team that was littered with D1 talent, we entered the third period up 4-3. Then a horribly unlucky bounce off of a referee’s skate left the puck sitting in the slot, and Holderness made no mistake, quickly capitalizing to tie the game up at 4. A bad penalty followed by a tough call later, we found ourselves down 5-on-3, where, once again, Holderness would score, before sealing the deal with an empty net goal a few minutes later.
Still, once again, we upheld our goal set at the beginning of the season: to be the most successful team in Groton history, and we did it while coming away with two gritty wins and having a ton of fun along the way.