Perfection arrives in several forms, with several different numbers attached, depending on the situation, sports or otherwise.
For the Skaneateles girls ice hockey team, perfection took the shape of a 19-0 season and a New York State Public High School Athletic Association championship, the first in the program’s history.
On Saturday afternoon at SUNY-Canton’s Roos House, the Lakers completed its unblemished run through the winter by defeating Section VI champion Orchard Park 5-1.
And while the game featured a hat trick by Abby Kuhns, its larger theme was that Skaneateles completed an even rarer feat than just an undefeated mark, managing to navigate through 19 games without ever trailing in any one of them – a total of 855 minutes of ice time, most of them spent nursing or building leads.
Very few sides gave Skaneateles much stress throughout this 19-0 season, and Orchard Park would not, either, once Kuhns was done unleashing her skills on the Quakers.
Each side had comfortably won their respective state semifinals on Friday night by equal 5-1 margins – Skaneateles pulling away from Potsdam, Orchard Park doing the same against Beekmantown.
That pointed toward a tight, competitive state final, which it was for much of the first period. For a while, shots were even, and so were scoring opportunities.
Then Skaneateles went on the power play late in the period and Kuhns, off feeds from Allison Weiss and Sophie Kush, converted to give the Lakers a 1-0 lead.
Deep into the second period, it remained a one-goal margin, and Orchard Park had a chance, on its own power play, to pull even and perhaps put some doubt into the Skaneateles faithful.
Instead, the puck got loose and Kuhns took it to the other end, a solo breakaway that ended with a goal that not only doubled the margin to 2-0, it may have broken the Quakers’ collective spirits.
And it didn’t take long for Kuhns to strike again, taking a pass from Kush and netting her third goal right after the short-handed tally. In barely half a game, Kuhns had scored on a power play, short-handed and at full strength.
Yet even with a 3-0 lead going into the third period, Skaneateles was not content. Kush, unassisted, poured in a fourth Lakers goal, and Megan Teachout took her turn minutes later with her third goal of the championship weekend.
Meanwhile, the Skaneateles defense, a constant source of strength throughout the season, made sure Orchard Park stayed discouraged, keeping the Quakers off the board until late in the third period, by which point it was clear the Lakers’ quest for an undefeated state crown would reach a successful end.
It helped the Lakers that the semifinal against Potsdam produced no stress on the ice. The only real trouble Skaneateles had was getting to Camden after early-morning snows caused a brief delay in he trip.
Once there, though, the Lakers weren’t about to look for excuses for a slow start. Instead, it took just two minutes, 27 seconds to seize a 1-0 lead on the power play, with Kush scoring and Weiss earning the assist.
It stayed that way until early in the second period. Again, a clean sheet of ice benefited the fast, skillful Lakers as Teachout found the net at the 1:44 mark off a nice feed from Sophia Burns.
Potsdam did cut the lead to 2-1 four minutes later, but solid work in goal by Johna Halko made sure the Sandstoners didn’t catch up, and Kuhns answered by forcing a Sandstoners turnover and putting the puck in the net to restore the Skaneateles margin.
Though Potsdam didn’t immediately go away, the Lakers settled matters midway through the third period when Teachout, on a power play, skated right through the Sandstoners’ defenders and scored on a backhand. Kuhns added an empty-net goal with 2:10 left.
A day later, the Lakers matched that final score against Orchard Park, and won the biggest prize of all.
