By Blake Santana
On the heels of the school’s first Division I hockey championship, there was still more hockey to be played for five Londonderry seniors with the annual Senior All-Star Games in Exeter. This year, unlike in past years, the teams were mixed with Divison I, II, and III players on all four squads. Gone were the days of Division I and Division II being in one game and Division III being a separate contest. All players who played for the same squad during the season were placed on the same team for the tournament, with Londonderry’s crew being assigned to Team White 1.
Team White 1 had players from Londonderry (James Kircaldie, Mike Maloney, Owen Carey, Jayden Hamilton, Brendon Morin), Manchester (Joey Velez, Lukas Tate), Somersworth-Coe-Brown (Gio Green, Tully Keefe, James Sawyer), Spaulding (Trevor Brennan), Pembroke-Campbell (3, Cameron Plante, Patrick Chamberlain, Liam Cripps), and Kearsarge-Plymouth (Jack Swanson, Brennan Johnson).
This season, due to the introduction of a round-robin tournament, the day was divided into 25-minute running-time games where everyone got to play each other once. Team White 1’s first matchup of the day was against Team White 2. The two teams battled hard, but it was Team White 2 that emerged with the win in the first game, as Team White 1 would stay on rink 2 to take on Team Red in game two.
The second game started strong for Team White 1, as Owen Carey found the back of the net, beating Winnacunnet’s Owen Helton on a rebound opportunity to make it 1-0 heading into the break halfway through the second game to allow the ice to be cleaned. Unfortunately for Team White 1, Joe DeKarski and Jack Wilkinson were able to find the back of the net in the second half of the game, giving Team Red a 2-1, come-from-behind victory.
In the third game, which served as a defacto third-place game with both teams entering at 0-2 and both teams playing on rink 2 being 2-0 heading into the final matchup, Team White 1 took on Team Blue, and won 3-2 in a thriller that was never really out of reach, despite Team Blue losing Kolin Melanson to an injury after their second game.
Team White 1 finished in third place on the day, going 1-2 in the round-robin and having a goal-differential of -2. Team Red finished in first place, going 3-0 and having a +3 goal differential. Team White 2 finished in second at 2-1 with a goal differential of +2, and Team Blue finished in fourth place with an 0-3 record and a -3 goal differential. All six games that were played on Sunday finished as one-or-two-goal contests, and all six games were competitive down to the final horn. All in all, a great way to end the season for the five Lancer seniors who already added a Division I Championship to their mantle on March 9.