Don Bosco hockey regains Bergen County title with storm of shorthanded goals
Trailing 2-0 and facing a five-minute major boarding penalty, Don Bosco seemed to be on the ropes in the Bergen County championship game against Northern Highlands. Highlanders goalie Daniel Moor was making stop after stop through the first 21 minutes of the game.
Teams on the power play typically feast on major penalties, but it was the Ironmen who changed the course of the game with a record-breaking 2:12 while playing a man down.
They scored three shorthanded goals to wrest the lead away from a stunned Moor and his Northern Highlands teammates, and the Highlanders never quite recovered as the Ironmen returned to the Bergen County throne with a 5-2 victory.
Don Bosco has now won nine of the ten county tournaments contested, atoning for a championship game loss to Bergen Catholic in 2020 (the 2021 tournament was a COVID casualty).
The shorthanded barrage began 5:57 into the second period when Gio Russo scored off a Nick Milmore assist. Kris Krummins then nabbed a loose puck near the blue line and sent a wrister home at 7:18. At 8:07, Matt Imbriano took a pass just off the left post and put Bosco into the lead.
“There was no panic,” Don Bosco coach Greg Toskos said. “We made a couple of mistakes on things we normally do very well and Highlands is a very good team and they capitalized on them. We just told them go out and keep at it.
“I really felt that we’d break the ice on the power play (Bosco came into the second period with the man advantage), but that didn’t happen. Then, we go down for the five minutes. When Gio put that first one in, that got us going. To get three there, that was amazing.”
Milmore made it 4-2 at 13:21 with another shorthanded goal in front to finish off a disastrous middle stanza for the Highlanders and he picked up his second goal of the game with 1:02 remaining to close it out.
“I’ve never seen anything like that,” Northern Highlands coach Jason Beswick said. “We were looking to get out of the first period even, and when we came off up two, we were in as good a position as we could have hoped for.
“We had made some changes on the power play before this game, and they did a good job of disrupting us. We’re thinking we have a chance to extend the lead and instead it goes the other way. I don’t know what to say, it was unreal.”
The Highlanders had a couple of early chances in the opening minutes and finally opened the scoring at 8:05 of the first period. Brent Beswick came down the middle and took a lead pass from J.T. Gandara and went top shelf right over the shoulder of Bosco goalie Ethan Marich.
Highlands extended its lead to 2-0 with a goal at 14:15 of the first, as Vincenzo Capano came in on the right side, pushed the puck through a defender and sent a pretty pass to Will Brown back door at the left post for the east tap in.
“It’s nice to get the trophy back in Ramsey; it’s been a long two years” Toskos said. “More importantly, it’s the first trophy for this group. There’s only one guy who played when we last won this (in 2019), so it’s great for them to get that championship feel. You saw the reaction at the end of the game, the excitement.”
For the Highlanders, it was another opportunity to match up against one of the best in New Jersey. A team that annually plays a rigorous schedule, the loss will hurt now but make them better come February and hopefully March.
“I won’t sleep well tonight, but games like this against that kind of competition are learning experiences for us. We’ll only get better from this,” Beswick said. “We might not see a better team the rest of the way, so we just need to understand what it takes to win against a tema like Bosco, not just compete.”
This article originally appeared on NorthJersey.com: Don Bosco NJ hockey regains Bergen County title with shorthanded goals
