The night before Avon Old Farms, the No. 8 seed, was set to make the two-hour drive to No. 1 Dexter Southfield for an Elite 8 quarterfinals game they were projected to lose, the team had dinner at headmaster James DeTora’s house.
DeTora had a reason for the dinner.
He turned on the film of the 2000 Avon Old Farms squad, which was the last Winged Beavers team to win the Stuart/Corkery tournament as the No. 8 seed. He showed how Avon reacted to winning that game: They were cool, calm and collected.
He flipped to the next clip, and it was that 2000 Avon team beating Deerfield in overtime of the championship game. The celebration was bedlam.
“That’s what you guys are working for,” DeTora said to them. “You’re not working for the celebration on Wednesday or Saturday. You’re working for the one on Sunday.”
The message resonated with the group, but it didn’t change the odds.
This was still the same team that entered the postseason having won only one of its previous nine games. There was a six-game losing streak from Jan. 31 to Feb. 21. There were injuries and sickness. The Winged Beavers hung onto the No. 8 spot in the Elite 8 by the tips of their fingers.
But somewhere in that dressing room was the team that started 14-1-1. The team was No. 1 in the JSPR and the rankings for most of the first two months.
It just came down to which team would show up in the final week.
On the day of the Avon Old Farms Christmas Classic championship, the coaching staff pulled team captain Tucker Harris aside with gutwrenching news.
Legendary coach John Gardner had died of cancer. Harris and starting goalie Anthony Palmer were the only two on the roster who had played on Gardner’s last team in 2023-24.
“The coaches were having a really tough time with it because he was a mentor to all of them,” Harris said.
The coaching staff, led by head coach Mark Naclerio, who played for Gardner and worked under him as an assistant, gathered the team in the dressing room right before the game to tell them.
“Especially for Tucker and me being the only guys to play for him, it definitely hit us deeper than everyone else,” Palmer said. “It’s a brotherhood. All the boys were there for us. When they see us down like that, it makes them all want to work harder, especially the coaches, too.
“Seeing Naclerio be that vulnerable, speaking to us and shedding tears. It just means a lot.”
The Winged Beavers used it as motivation, beating Frederick Gunn, 4-1, to win the Christmas Classic. That momentum carried into January with wins over Taft, Hotchkiss, Kent, Northfield Mount Hermon, Loomis Chaffee and Westminster.
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Throughout that, Avon was dealing with injuries. In the Jan. 14 win over Hotchkiss, with star forwards Ethan Gingeleskie and Sean Millen already out, Harris went down a few shifts into the game.
All three missed significant time. And while the Winged Beavers kept the good times rolling in January, their luck turned in February.
A 4-3 loss to Choate. A 4-2 loss to Westminster. A 5-2 loss to Frederick Gunn. A 3-1 loss to Deerfield. A 5-4 loss to Choate. Worst of all, a 6-0 drubbing at Salisbury.
“It’s not easy when you’re losing,” Naclerio said. “I would just relay to them, earn your bounces, earn your bounces. We weren’t getting bounces as much.”
The team was desperate for one win. After that Salisbury loss, Canterbury was up next on the schedule. The Saints were in the Elite 8 hunt. A loss would extend the streak to seven straight and severely hurt Avon’s chances at staying in the Elite 8 hunt.
But the streak ended. Avon dominated Canterbury and won, 4-0.
“When we were majority back for Canterbury and pumped them, I could kind of feel a shift,” Harris said. “That was the first complete hockey game we had played as a team and it felt like the way we’d been playing all the way up to our Christmas tournament.”
The Winged Beavers followed that up with a pair of ties to Pomfret and Loomis, just holding onto an Elite 8 spot.
“Once we got in and had a chance,” Harris started, “I honestly and truly believed that we were going to win it.”
The mindset entering this Elite 8, however, was different.
“It was kind of nice to be the No. 8 seed,” Avon backup goalie Will Bagot said. “We’re Avon Old Farms — everyone’s looking to beat us. We were being hunted the entire year, and it was our turn to be the hunter.”
With Dexter’s Fusco Arena half-packed with Dexter’s student section and the other half with Avon’s, the Winged Beavers got off to a roaring start.
Gingelskie scored twice to put the underdogs up 2-0. Even after Dexter cut the lead in half, the Winged Beavers went to the dressing room up a goal and with newfound confidence.
“I thought after that period, we could play with anyone if we could play with them,” Palmer said.
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Avon made all the right adjustments, keeping Dexter’s shots mostly to the outside. Junior forward Maks Morgoslepov added a shorthanded goal and Millen tallied one at the top of the third period to secure the 4-2 win.
But Avon won because of Palmer, who made 47 saves to shut down the best team in prep. He followed that up with a 32-save shutout to take down No. 5 Hotchkiss, 5-0, in the semifinals, going head-to-head with Northeastern commit Neilan Johnson.
“He’s been unbelievable as a goalie for us these past three years,” Harris said. “He’s the reason we won those first two games. He was outstanding.”
Then came the championship game against No. 2 St. Mark’s. The Winged Beavers were already down Gingeleskie.
And then, less than two minutes in, Palmer couldn’t get up after making a save on St. Mark’s senior forward Evan Nee. He had to be helped off the ice.
“That sucked,” Harris said. “But our entire season has been next-man-up mentality. Just like any other game, when one of our players got hurt, we knew what we had to do.”
As Palmer skated off, Bagot, the back-up, came in.
“I’m feeling bad for [Palmer], but then it comes down to me, and I’m ready,” Bagot said. “I felt prepared. I was nervous, of course, but as soon as I got in the net I felt comfortable.”
What really put Bagot at ease was the kick save Avon defenseman Max Yakub made on Nee in the slot, preventing a goal into an empty net. St. Mark’s star Caiden Pellegrino had taken the puck wide and thrown it off the post. Bagot committed so much that he was out of the net, so when the puck bounced to Nee in the slot, it was a gaping cage.
Yakub, however, got his foot on it.
“I’m thinking, ‘This is the end of the world.’ I didn’t know what to think,” Bagot said. “I just screwed up in the biggest game of my life. But thank God he made that save. It was unbelievable.”
From there, Avon controlled the game. Junior forward Aiden Strzelecki sniped his first goal of the season midway through the first. Then, moments later, star forward Nico Ciardiello scored a snipe of his own, which came after a four-goal outburst against Hotchkiss.
“Nico contributed exponentially in the playoffs,” Naclerio said. “He did all year, but he really found another gear in the playoffs.”
Harris and senior Jacob Jett scored in the second period. And while St. Mark’s tacked one on, the Winged Beavers entered the third period up 4-1.
That’s when St. Mark’s upped the pressure, but Bagot was at his best, finishing with an incredible 48 saves on 50 shots.
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“He was ready for the moment,” Palmer said.
After the raucous celebration that DeTora had put in their heads just days earlier, Harris accepted the Elite 8 trophy with a hat in his hand that had Gardner’s “JTG” initials on it.
That’s when it hit Naclerio.
“I know John was smiling down on us.”
