It was uncharted territory for Thornton Academy. Until it wasn’t.
The top-seeded Trojans, on the verge of extending their Maine high school boys hockey dynasty, were in an unfamiliar situation in the first period of the Class A state championship.
When No. 2 Cheverus/Yarmouth opened the scoring early in the first frame at Cross Insurance Arena, there wasn’t panic on head coach Jamie Gagnon’s bench. But it wasn’t exactly comfortable, either.
Thornton Academy lost only one game this winter — its second of the season on Dec. 6 — and rarely trailed en route to a 17-1-0 finish.
But the Trojans’ identity slowly emerged. And for that, Thornton Academy’s thrilling 2-1 victory was equally as familiar to a team built on depth, special teams and resilience.
“Very much like some of our other games, and very different than most of our other games,” Gagnon said.
After Connor St. George provided Cheverus/Yarmouth with a 1-0 lead, Thornton Academy, regarded as the team to beat all season, captured its second straight state championship with goals from Brennan Tabor and Jake Skillings. The victory marks the fifth state crown in the program’s history and the third in the last four years.
Thornton Academy edged No. 8 Bangor/Brewer/Skowhegan/Narraguagus (3-0) and No. 5 Falmouth (4-1) before its marathon with Cheverus/Yarmouth.
The teams hit the ice for the first time this winter on Jan. 10, a back-and-forth 4-3 overtime victory for Thornton Academy. The Trojans skated to a 4-0 win in the second meeting, but still expected a battle in the final.
“It’s a well-coached team,” Gagnon said. “It’s a team that’s got tremendous grit and plays the game all 200 feet and challenges you at every turn. So we knew that goals would be hard to come by.”
And after succumbing to a 1-0 deficit in the early goings of the biggest game of the season, it was all about staying true to Thornton Academy’s identity.
“It was much more about getting back to what we are and what we do and having full confidence in the fact that it’s going to be really tough to keep us off the board all game long,” Gagnon said. “We are that one shot away.”
That sentiment proved to be true when Tabor evened the game at 1-1, a table-setter for Skillings’ exciting shorthanded goal in the third period before Cole Fernald made some huge stops between the pipes in the waning minutes.
Skillings, an ultra-talented senior, attempted to make a play on the puck by pressuring a Cheverus/Yarmouth defender along the blue line on a penalty kill. The puck then found Trent LeSieur in the middle of the ice, and he dished to Skillings streaking through both defensemen for a breakaway.
Skillings corralled the perfectly-placed pass and buried it over the blocker for the game-winner, a goal he said he will remember for the rest of his life.
“I knew Trent was going to give it to me,” said Skillings, who has a close bond with LeSieur dating back to youth hockey days. “I knew he was going to lob it over their heads, and we had a chance to capitalize on a mistake they had.”
A fragment of Thornton Academy’s identity, in the most pivotal moment of the season. Skillings and LeSieur have wreaked havoc on the penalty kill all year.
“When we’re short-handed, we actually feel pretty comfortable that we may hold more possession than the other team,” Gagnon said.
And it was a goal scorer’s goal. Skillings received the puck just over the offensive zone blue line but had to glide into the low slot while the puck settled on his stick.
“That’s the type of thing that goal scorers understand,” Gagnon said. “Don’t just let it go. He kind of has to get it settled, but he also wants to get it off quick.”
Skillings led Class A in scoring with a line of 21-28—49 and was recently named the Travis Roy Award winner, a highly-touted honor given to the top senior in Class A. It was no surprise that Thornton Academy was the favorite to repeat as champions, which meant the Trojans faced everyone’s best game.
Skillings played a major role in not letting outside noise derail the team’s goals.
“A lot of us just said we were going to play our game and play the way we identify and keep doing what we’re doing,” Skillings said. “We’re not going to let other people stop us. The train will keep rolling.”
Skillings is one of the many players on Gagnon’s roster with a mantle decked of hardware. The senior has already racked up four titles — three in hockey and one in lacrosse.
This winter marked defenseman Grady Hersey’s fourth consecutive season with a title after earning trophies with hockey and lacrosse as a junior and football and hockey as a senior. The Merrimack College lacrosse commit will now reach for five with Skillings on the turf this spring.
“You get kids like that who have been successful in other sports or other arenas and I think they really make the rest of the kids, especially the younger guys, understand just how taxing a season can be when you go all the way to the very last game of the year,” Gagnon said.
