With 26 seconds left and the game tied, Eddie Ellis ’12 passed the puck across the ice to Trevor Braun ’12, who put the puck in the back of the net with a beautiful shot to give Andover the win against Deerfield on Wednesday. “It felt unbelievable to score the winning goal. As hockey players, we all play to score big goals like that. Eddie and Garnet did most of the work. I just got lucky and tipped it upstairs,” said Braun. Andover came out on the attack against Deerfield. Just minutes into the game, Braun took control of a loose puck and gave it to Hathaway, who put Andover on the board with a great shot. Andover’s scoring did not stop there. Ellis fired a snapshot past the Deerfield goalie with 17 minutes left in the second period, and MacDonald sniped a snapshot goal only a minute later to increase the lead to three. Late in the second period, Deerfield made a run to threaten Andover’s lead. It took advantage of two consecutive Andover penalties to cut Andover’s lead to one goal. The first was a slapshot from the point with two minutes left, and the second was a nice shot from the corner with only 20 seconds remaining in the period. Deerfield continued its scoring streak in the third period, with two consecutive goals to start the period. After 15 minutes of back and forth play, Safstrom responded. A deflected shot from Keaton Cashin ’10 came right to Safstrom’s stick, and he easily slipped it into the side of the net with only one minute remaining in the game. Although the score was tied with only one minute to play, Andover refused to allow the game to go into overtime. With 26 seconds left, Braun scored his goal to give Andover the exciting victory. The previous Saturday, the team started the game off playing fast paced, high-energy hockey. Andover established a two goal lead after only 11 minutes of play. With seven minutes left in the first period, Will Gray ’10 made a nice pass to Redmond Colson ’10 at the blue line, who snuck it through the five hole for the goal. On the same shift only twenty seconds later, Keith MacDonald ’10 slipped a pass to Gray, who scored with a great top shelf snap shot past the Loomis goalie. Captain Brian Safstrom said, “Our game against Loomis was one of the few games of the season that we really started off with a lot of energy. We made a lot of good smart plays and really took it to them in the first period.” Ellis scored the next goal with 14 minutes left in the second period. Garnet Hathaway ’10 sent a beautiful pass to Ellis in front of the net, who quickly snapped a shot to give Andover the three goal lead. Braun continued Andover’s offensive outburst with a goal on an odd man rush, as Andover had a three-on-two breakaway. Hathaway assisted the goal, earning his second point of the day. Safstrom said, “We did a better job converting on our odd man rushes against Loomis, something that we have been focusing heavily on in the last week of practice.” Loomis’s first and last goal came late in the second period, as Andover held on to its commanding lead until the final whistle. With stronger teams ahead in its schedule, the team still has room to improve and reach its potential. “We still need to work more on winning one-on-one battles all over the ice,” said Safstrom. “Stronger teams in the future will capitalize on those mistakes, and it could cost us games.” Said Gray, “Overall, we got a lot more shots than we had in the previous two games, but we really have to work on finishing goal scoring opportunities.” On Saturday, Andover hockey travels to Belmont to take on Belmont Hill (15-3-2).
