By KEVIN OKLOBZIJA
A high-percentage shot it was not; Chase Brock freely admits that.
Yet when the McQuaid Jesuit freshman winger darted in off the left wing and through the bottom of the circle, he was thinking just one thing.
“Get the puck on your stick and shoot it,” he said.
Which is just what he did. Despite a bad angle, Brock used a quick release and laser accuracy to pick the top shelf on goalie Danny Kucmerowski.
The goal broke a 2-2 tie early in the third period, then Brock scored again late in the period to give the Knights a 4-2 comeback victory over the Portside Royals and their first Section V Class A hockey championship in nine years.
“It was probably a pretty bad shot,” Brock said late Monday night on the ice of the Gene Polisseni Center. “Coach Dugan would call it a low percentage shot. But it went in.”
And from that point on the second-seeded Knights overwhelmed No. 5 Portside until Brock scored again, swatting home his own rebound with just 1:37 remaining.
The victory sends McQuaid (18-5) into the regionals to play Ithaca at 2:30 p.m. Saturday back on the RIT campus while Portside’s season ended at 12-9-2.
“I’m proud of each and every one of these guys,” Portside coach Bill McGrath said. “We dealt with a lot of adversity all year and a lot of these guys have been fighting illness. You could see the legs just disappear.”
For the better part of two periods, however, Portside controlled the momentum. Senior Kevin Eckerd gave the Royals a 1-0 lead 5:52 into the first period by firing home a shot from the slot off a Justin Pastorella set-up.
It stayed 1-0 until Pastorella’s goal-mouth feed left junior Connor Thomas with an open left side of the net 11:03 into the second period and the Royals were up by two.
The widening deficit certainly was a concern for McQuaid, especially the way Royals goalie Danny Kucmerowski has been playing. The junior backstopped Portside to sectional victories over Hilton (5-1) and top-seeded Pittsford (4-1), and was showing off the hot hand, and blocker, and leg pads, again on Monday night.
The big-time saves had Portside’s boisterous student section chanting his name time and time again. But McQuaid never panicked.
“We knew we had to just continue to test him,” Dugan said, “and we continued to do that.”
The Knights were finally rewarded for their persistence when junior Jack Callery scored off Brock’s centering pass on a power play with 3:28 left in the second period.
The goal gave McQuaid instant momentum and planted the seed of doubt for the Royals.
“With high school kids, momentum is everything,” McGrath said.
The Knights stormed Portside to start the third period and were rewarded just 44 seconds in when Lou Zaari scored to tie the game at 2-2.
Brock then put McQuaid ahead on the next shift. He angled between a defender and the boards on left wing, then darted toward the net before finding what little space existed between the post and Kucmerowski.
“In the locker room after the second period I think we all knew what was going to happen,” Brock said.
Portside’s Frank Grad had a great chance to tie the score with just under five minutes remaining, dangling past a defender as he attacked on the left wing, but McQuaid freshman goalie Anthony Gonzalez stopped the shot.
Three minute later Brock delivered, as he called, “the dagger.” Kucmerowski stopped his in-tight shot but the rebound slithered free and Brock slammed it home.
As he charged toward McQuaid’s student section in the corner to celebrate, more than a dozen hats were thrown onto the ice.
It was, quite possibly, the first two-goal hat trick in hockey history.
“It was pretty funny,” Brock said, “but I’m not going to complain.”
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