AVON, Conn. -- The team of destiny struck again and will be playing for all the marbles for the third year in a row as a result.
The Salisbury Crimson Knights staged yet another impressive comeback against yet another awesome team to earn a berth in the Stuart/Corkery Elite 8 final with a thrilling 4-3 overtime win over the powerhouse Avon Old Farms Winged Beavers in thrilling semfinal action here Saturday afternoon.
With the win, Salisbury faces Dexter Southfield (who beat Berkshire, 3-0, in the other semifinal) in the Elite 8 final on Sunday at 5 p.m. at Trinity College in Hartford, Conn.
The Martin/Earl Large Schools title game, at 2:30 p.m., will be between Loomis Chaffee and Cushing. Gunnery and Pomfret will battle for the Piatelli/Simmons Small Schools title, set for 12:30 p.m. faceoff.
Here's what we saw at a jam-packed Jennings Fairchild Rink:
Why Salisbury won
How many ways can you say, "This team never gives up"? Fresh off their stunning 7-4 win over Kimball Union on Wednesday, a game in which they trailed 3-0 early in the second, the Knights showed no quit.
After a scoreless and Avon-heavy first period, it was looking pretty grim for the Knights when Timur Alishlalov swept in a Tabor Heaslip rebound with 3:34 left in the second to give the home team a 1-0 lead.
But Salisbury forgetting yet again how to cave in under pressure, Tommy Rooney (Milton, Mass.) snapped home a rebound into a gaping net with zeroes on the clock, just barely beating the buzzer to make it 1-1. The goal came with Salisbury on the power play, its third to that point of the game.
From there, it was a goal exchange in the third: Avon senior captain Gentry Shamburger went bar-down at 13:49 to put his team up 2-1; Salisbury assistant captain Lucas Mercuri snapped in a rebound through traffic to make it 2-2 at 8:01; J.P. Turner (East Falmouth, Mass.) faked the toe-drag pass on the 2-on-1 and picked the corner to the glove side of Nick Haas to give Avon a 3-2 lead at 7:03; and Jake Quillan, star of Salisbury's comeback win over Kimball Union in Wednesday's semifinal, cleaned up a scramble in front at 2:12 to force overtime.
But the real, tangible reason Salisbury won: In overtime, fresh off a point-blank stop on Shamburger by Haas, after a faceoff in the Avon end, the puck drifted to Matthew DeBoer in the high slot, who made no mistake and fired the wrister past Conor Callaghan just 2:08 into the extra period to send the Knights onward.
The crowd and the Winged Beavers, who went an amazing 23-2 this season, were stunned. Salisbury, who went 21-3-1 for the season, avenged one of their three losses by eliminating Avon and moving on to the finals for the third season in a row.
Veteran Avon coach John Gardner, who was at win No. 799 heading into the game, will have to wait until next season to be presented his No. 800 banner.
Best players on the ice
In a game as close as this one, any number of players qualify to be considered.
But to save time, we'll keep it reasonable.
For Avon, Turner was again a beast, his goal a rocket and his aggressive play in the third particularly worth noting. Heaslip also had his usual tenacious game, working well in deep and coming up with pucks and petulance. Callaghan also gets a nod for his strong and steady play in the nets.
Over on the Salisbury side, Haas came up time and time again when the Avon onslaught was strongest in the first period. The Winged Beavers were most successful this season when scoring early, which would then lead to them scoring often. Haas' work at containing that went a long way toward this win.
Also deserving consideration for the Knights were Rooney and DeBoer, who, with their strong play, definitively showed that Salisbury was more than Quillan, Mercuri and Oliver Frontini. This depth will afford the Crimson Knights well against Dexter Southfield.
Key play
The obvious answer here is the overtime goal. No goal there, no win for Salisbury, no advancing to the final, no chance at redemption, no comeback kids. But the turning point came late in the third period and wasn't actually a play at all.
His team down 3-2, Salisbury coach Andrew Will called a timeout with 2:26 left in regulation, using the opportunity to go over some key strategy points but, as with most late timeouts, mostly trying to calm down his players while providing a rest for the workhorses.
The strategy paid off big-time as, with Haas pulled in favor of the extra attacker, Quillan scored to knot the game at 3-3 and force overtime. Directly on the heels of that, Knights senior captain Jarod Crespo cleared a rebound on a 2-on-2 with 50 seconds left to preserve the tie, and the call for focus had taken hold.
Paul Grant is an editor and a writer for HockeyJournal.com and Seamans Media. He previously oversaw hockey content at ESPN.com and Sporting News. You can connect with him at pgrant@hockeyjournal.com.
