Hockey: Penncrest completes ‘unreal’ run to Central title

ASTON – The mythology of the Penncrest hockey team’s Central League championship comes wrapped in a neat red-and-white bow.

Yeah, there’s the seven seed that the Lions entered the Central League playoffs with this week. But more than that, there’s the goose egg endured when the current crop of seniors were freshmen in 2019-20. It’s a juxtaposition the Penncrest players front and center in this triumph.

“It feels unreal,” senior defenseman Colin Curran said after a 6-4 win over Lower Merion in the final at Ice Works Thursday night. “Since my freshman year, when we didn’t win a game, and to progress all the way to winning the Central League championship, it’s just an unreal thing.”

The Lions were the better team from start to finish Thursday. They led 5-2 after two periods and held on late as No. 5 Lower Merion pushed for a goal, tipping the momentum with a short-handed tally. But goalie Fiona Walker came up with 27 saves, the Lions were consistently solid with three lines and had a defensive corps that steadily made plays to lift their first Central League championship since 2005, a year they also claimed the state title.

It was evident from the very start. Penncrest led 4:37 into the game when Gabe Hartman willed a shot through traffic and past Lower Merion goalie Will Zeger, who got a piece of it. Eddie Morroni doubled the lead 10 minutes later, slipping to the net front on a delayed penalty call to cash in a board battle won by Kain Walker and Jackson Wickman below the goal line.

“Adrenaline, and we’ve had in in our heads that we haven’t won a Central League championship since 2005 and haven’t been in one in 10 years,” Kain Walker said. “So it was just something we needed to get done. … We wanted it more, we worked harder out in those corners, pop it out to him right in front, he’s there to bury it.”

Joe Kirchoff, driving the paint, made it 3-1 early in the second when Zeger allowed a juicy rebound of a Wickman point drive on the power play. Walker roofed a shot high glove on a breakaway down the right wing at 12:50 of the second, and Matt McKay picked off a pass at his own blue line to spring Scott Scranton for a breakaway goal to make it 5-2. Kain Walker nearly made it 6-2 but missed slipping a breakaway on the short side by inches late in the second.

The play of McKay and Nash Grant, who scored twice in the semifinal win over Radnor, is significant from a pair of freshmen on the blue line who are willing to step into ever larger roles.

“They’ve both improved so much, and they’re so much more confident out there,” said Curran, the leader of the defensive corps. “And they don’t play scared at all.”

Lower Merion played a near spotless game in the semifinal to upend top-seeded Haverford, 4-0. After taking just one penalty in that game, they were whistled for three in the first 20 minutes of play Thursday and played much of the final 10 minutes down a man when Jeremy Kagan got a game misconduct for butt-ending McKay in front of the net.

Toby Myers, the Aces’ smooth-skating and hulking defenseman, got them on the board with six seconds left in the first period, sneaking a shot under the pad of Fiona Walker. But Myers had the turnover that led to Scranton’s goal, another loose play that ultimately doomed the Aces.

Noam Nisimi got them within 3-2 early in the second, but Penncrest largely negated the danger of Lower Merion’s top line, Fiona Walker always having the answer whenever Jack Rabinowitz got a look.

“The postseason, she’s been great,” Kain Walker said of his younger sister. “It’s been fantastic. I expected it, but she stood on her head this game and the rest of the postseason to keep us in all the games.”

The first eight minutes of the final period passed idly before Kagan’s penalty. Lower Merion surprisingly took advantage of the open ice, Dylan Peterson scoring a short-handed goal to make it 5-3. He also blocked a pair of shots – and McCann was stung by one so badly that he crawled to the bench – to kill off a two-minute 5-on-3.

It allowed Nisimi to poke home a loose puck on the doorstep with Zeger pulled for an extra attacker when Peterson’s point drive filtered through traffic with 1:45 left. But Fiona Walker had the answer every other time, including a blocker dismissal of a Sam Flood breakaway just seconds after Nisimi had cut it to 5-3.

“I wasn’t that stressed,” Kain Walker said. “I trusted Fiona, trusted her to pull us through to the end. And I knew we could pull it through with the right guys on the ice.”

All that left was for Kain Walker to flip home his second goal of the game 150 feet into the empty net with 46 seconds left to set off celebrations that a week, a year and three years ago may have seemed improbable.

“Unreal. It’s honestly unreal,” Kain Walker said. “I can’t believe we finally did it.”