By Warren Kozireski —
It has been a minute or two since McQuaid tasted success in high school hockey. 2015 in fact when they won a New York State title.
They ended that drought coming back from a 2-0 deficit with four unanswered goals to win 4-2 and end the Cinderella run of Portside, who had defeated second-seed Hilton and top-seed Pittsford in the quarterfinals and semi-finals, respectively.
The Portside Royals (Brockport & Spencerport) took a 1-0 first period lead on their first shot of the game 6:52 in as Justin Pastorella fed Kevin Eckerd for the goal.
At 11:03 of the second, Pastorella fed Connor Thomas for another tally putting the Royals ahead 2-0.
McQuaid began their comeback late in the second period as freshman Chase Brock assisted Jack Cellery’s power play marker giving the Knights some momentum heading into the locker room.
On the first shift of the third, the Knights tied the game 2-2 as Lou Zaari pounded in the fourth rebound as McQuaid was swarming the Portside net.
Just 47 seconds later Brock set his shot from the left faceoff circle just inside the near post to give McQuaid a 3-2 lead.
Brock added an insurance tally with a rebound goal at 15:23 of the third for the final margin.
“Very happy; little stressed and the adrenaline is going, but looking forward to celebrating,” Brock said. “In the locker room I think we all knew that it was going to happen and great leaders on our team really took us through it.
“Our big thing last year was going into games and taking teams for granted and this year we play every team the same way no matter who they are.”
“We built throughout the year, but our first period wasn’t one of our better periods of the year…but they were able to regroup and start to turn it on and start to compete and turn it up in the third,” McQuaid head coach Joe Dugan said.
“It has been a moment that was being built towards and also credit to the guys who aren’t with us now who were part of that. Building the culture and competitiveness the way we wanted that done and it is nice to get a result for that.”
McQuaid advances to the New York State tournament and will host Ithaca Saturday at 2:30pm at RIT’s Polisseni Center.
(Photo provided by Warren Kozireski)
