Millbrook 2 -- Gunnery 1
Millbrook hung on to win yet another exciting hockey game this afternoon on Senior Day versus a tough Gunnery squad. The hosts rolled three lines to the Highlanders two, and were able to control large portions of the game in the opposing end, but the visitors kept coming up to the final whistle, and the outcome was always in doubt.
The fist period was scoreless, with Millbrook holding a slight edge in shots and chances, but Kirsten Bouthiller was sharp in the nets. In the second, it was more of the same, with the home team applying good pressure with no result, until Olivia Farrell made a great play, diving full length to spring Kelly Fallon for a breakaway while killing a penalty. Fallon made a good move and Bouthiller a better save and then a very unfortunate Marena Izzi, who had been furiously backchecking and had thrown herself to the ice to try to stop the shot, dragged the rebound into her own net. Millbrook took advantage of the momentum a goal usually brings and the busy Farrell rang one off the post soon thereafter, but the Mustangs took the slimmest of leads into the third.
Gunnery has never been a team to go down quietly, and they raised their pace to play their best period in the third. Five minutes in, a static Milllbrook defense failed to clear the crease and Izzi scored on the third rebound to tie the score. It took seven minutes of back-and-forth play, on a soupy surface with a slow puck, for somebody to break through, and for the second game running it was Molly Chapman who scored the winner, stepping in from the point and holding the puck until she saw net at the far post, burying a wrister halfway up. Millbrook kept much of the possession until the last minute, and the sharp Melissa Rome was not troubled during the six-on-five as her teammates kept the puck at the perimeter.
It was a joyous mob in front of Rome as it sunk in that Millbrook had beaten its nemesis for the first time in history, having only come close a handful of times in the thirteen years the teams have played each other. There were outstanding performances all around, but Ema Waldschmidt and Rachel DeSimone were decidedly on top of their games in their last appearance at their home rink. Captain Caroline McCarthy was on the ice in the last minute to help kill the game, and was part of a great celebration in the locker room.
