The final game of the regular season can be approached in many different ways.
For teams safely in a playoff spot, it’s a chance to rest top players and give others some well-deserved ice time. Squads who didn’t earn a shot at a championship might try to end their season on a high note.
Lawrence Academy didn’t fit in either of those categories when it faced Tabor on the last day of the season. The Spartans knew they would battle for a Piatelli/Simmons Small School championship but wanted to put themselves in the best position for home ice in the playoffs.
There were two other things they wanted to button up as well.
Eleven days before, the Spartans were in their first game of a back-to-back with rival Governor’s Academy. They took a bevy of penalties in the first period and spent the game playing from behind, ultimately losing, 5-2.
The next day, head coach Robbie Barker gave his team a message before taking the ice against Governor’s Academy again.
“If we can eliminate those parts of the game for us, then we can come out on the other end,” Barker said.
The Spartans played better and skated to a 3-3 tie. The next game was against St. Mark’s, and Barker’s team lost 1-0. A 1-1 tie against St. Sebastian’s came right before the final contest of the season against Tabor.
Improvement, improvement and more improvement. That went for the forwards and defensemen, but it also applied to the goaltender.
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In past seasons, Barker, who just finished his 11th season at the helm of Lawrence Academy, used to try and ride one goalie and would reap the consequences of that when his goalie would show fatigue in the postseason.
“I told myself three or four years ago that wasn’t going to be the case,” Barker said. “That wasn’t going to be the reason we lose.”
Lawrence Academy had senior goalies Luc Gagnon (Natick, Mass.) and Vincent Lamberti, between whom Barker swapped playing time this season. After Gagnon got the second start against Governor’s Academy, Barker opted for Lamberti against St. Mark’s and he finished with 25 saves. Barker went back to Lamberti against St. Sebastian’s and the senior stopped 28 of 29 shots.
“He competed really hard,” Barker said of Lamberti. “It was one of those games for him that stood out to me.”
Barker decided to challenge Lamberti entering the final game of the regular season — a good performance against Tabor would solidify his spot as the starter in the playoffs and get the Spartans their first win since Feb. 11 against St. Paul’s.
Lawrence Academy edged Tabor, 3-2. Lamberti had 36 saves.
“That’s where I saw a change in the sense of who we were as a team and what we were becoming,” Barker said.
The win propelled Lawrence Academy into the No. 4 seed in the Small School tournament. The Spartans faced Governor’s Academy in the quarterfinals and had home-ice advantage.
Barker’s team rolled over Governor’s Academy, 5-0. Lamberti had 28 saves, and the decision to stick with the netminder was a good one.
“We played, from top to bottom, our best game of the season,” Barker said.
In the win, junior forward Spencer Hirsch potted a hat trick. In the semifinals, a 4-3 win over New Hampton, Lawrence Academy got a hat trick out of junior forward Brendan Hirsch (Arlington, Mass.). While the two aren’t related, they do have this in common: They were two of the many players contributing offense for the Spartans.
“Guys step up,” Barker said. “And that’s been the mentality throughout the course of the season.”
One of those guys was Josh Erickson. A senior who moved up to the first line in the game against Tabor and never went back down, he notched a goal against Governor’s Academy in the quarterfinals and followed that up with three assists in the semifinals.
Then came the Small School final against Frederick Gunn.
The game was tied, 1-1, entering the third period, but the Highlanders scored two quick goals to make it 3-1. With nine minutes to play in the game, Barker told his guys what they needed to hear — if they could pop one in the coming minutes, they could force overtime.
Owen Leahy (Providence, R.I.), the team’s leading point-getter, entered the equation. Less than a minute after Frederick Gunn made it 3-1, Leahy dove for a loose puck in front of the opposing net and scored to cut the lead to 3-2.
A penalty taken with 1:01 to play in the game looked to thwart Lawrence Academy’s comeback efforts, but still, there was a sense on the Spartan bench that hope was still alive.
“I had faith in our guys,” Barker said. “You could tell they wanted it.”
They did. Lawrence Academy pulled Lamberti to make it 5-on-5 and with 22.1 seconds left, Erickson backhanded a puck through Frederick Gunn goalie Ryan Crowshaw’s (West Hartford, Conn.) legs to tie the game as the large Spartan crowd on hand erupted.
Both teams traded chances in overtime. But the winning goal scorer found himself in a Lawrence Academy sweater.
“If anybody was going to want the puck on his stick, Leahy wanted it,” Barker said. “You knew that at some point in that overtime, if he got some space, he was going to take it to the net and finish it off.”
That’s exactly what happened. Erickson found Leahy with some space in the neutral zone. Leahy burst in on Crowshaw all alone and trickled a shot through his legs, giving Lawrence Academy, the No. 4 seed, the Small School title.
“You saw a spurt of who Owen Leahy is on that Sunday,” Barker said.
The Spartans were an unlikely champion. The win marked the first time they had won more than three games in a row. While they played a difficult schedule of games in the ISL Keller Division, the Spartans’ record of 6-8-2 after the holiday break didn’t exactly jump off the page.
“It was just a matter of time for them to adjust,” Barker said. “Sometimes it comes in the first two weeks, sometimes it comes in the first month and sometimes it doesn’t come for six to eight weeks.”
And sometimes it takes until the last two weeks of the season to click. That’s fine when it results in a championship.
