Right to the last seconds of Sunday’s Section III Division I championship game at Utica Memorial Auditorium, the Baldwinsville ice hockey team did all it could to hold on to the crown it seized from West Genesee one year ago.
But when the final horn sounded, it was the Wildcats back on top, having prevailed 1-0 despite a tremendous effort from goaltender Matt Sabourin, who stopped 32 of the 33 shots he faced, only surrendering a goal in the last minute of the second period.
No doubt, WG had spent the entire season motivated by last winter’s sectional semifinal defeat to B’ville, especially since the Bees went on to beat Syracuse for the championship and then reached the state final before falling to Rochester McQuaid.
They met twice in the regular season. On Dec. 11 at Shove Park, the Bees were shut out, 3-0, but on Feb. 2 at Lysander Arena it rallied from a two-goal deficit in the third period and tied WG 2-2, nearly winning it in overtime before Garrett Gray’s shot clanged off the crossbar.
Having breezed through two sectional playoff opponents (Rome Free Academy and Cicero-North Syracuse) by a combined 14-0 margin, WG knew B’ville, who had survived double overtime to knock off Syracuse in its semifinal (see separate story), would offer up far more resistance, physical and otherwise.
And like so many other games between the Bees and Wildcats, this one was hard-hitting from the outset, with few great scoring chances on either side. Gradually, though, the Wildcats assumed control, but it didn’t show on the scoreboard.
WG had 13 shots in the first period, all of them turned away by Sabourin to keep it 0-0 despite the Bees only having four shots of its own. Sabourin made more big stops throughout the second period, working his total to 19 saves while seeing his B’ville teammates rarely get any good chances of its own.
Then, with 30.9 seconds left in the second period, the Bees bent. Again WG was circling the puck in the Bees’ end when Marshall Winn dug it out of the boards and passed to Matt McDonald. From the point, McDonald launched a wrist shot that Jeff Kopek tipped past Sabourin before he could even react.
Trailing by a goal, B’ville knew that it had come back from twice that deficit against WG earlier in the month. But the Wildcats knew that, too, and kept on the attack in the third period, the Bees still not putting much sustained pressure on WG goalie Sammy Colabufo.
Any time B’ville did get an odd-man rush, one Wildcat defender or another was able to get their bodies in front of the puck, limiting the damage. Even in the final minutes, when it needed to generate some opportunities, WG snuffed them out.
With WG players swarming to the puck all over the ice, B’ville couldn’t pull Sabourin for an extra attacker until the final 30 seconds, still enough time to do something – but one more time, WG turned the Bees away with a series of blocked shots as the clock ran out.
B’ville finished the 2015-16 season at 16-6-1, and now must see a strong group of seniors, including Sabourin, Gray, Matt Metcalf, Andrew Starrantino, Charlie Bertrand and Alex Paterson-Jones graduate, plus watch and see if junior programs claim some of the other players on the roster before next winter.
