The Boston Gold Kings faced off against the Hudson Valley Reapers at the John A. Ryan Arena in Watertown on April 4. (Courtesy of the Boston Gold Kings)
When a team wins a championship and the dust settles on the celebration, and then the season begins anew, defending said championship becomes the number one storyline. Trying to defend/repeat can be motivating or it can be a burden, or sometimes a little of both.
Watertown’s own entry in the Power Play Senior Hockey League, the Boston Gold Kings, have spent the whole season up to this point believing they were better then last year’s championship squad, and that the challenge of repeating was all good. While the Gold Kings play has been up and down, and while penalties and a lack of discipline rendered their regular season inconsistent, the roster is full of good guys and equally good hockey players.
The Gold Kings finished the season in second place, and they won their best-of-three semifinal matchup with the Salem Sasquatch, two games to one. The elephant in the room though was the newest entry to the league, the Hudson Valley (NY) Reapers. Fast, strong, disciplined, good forecheckers and better passers, the Reapers stormed the league to the tune of 14-2 in the regular season, and a two-game sweep of their semifinal, where they outscored Holyoke 22-5. The Gold Kings played the Reapers as well as any in the regular season, winning one of two at home and playing well at Hudson Valley and in possession of leads in both games before falling to defeat. The Gold Kings have every right to believe they can play with the Reapers, and beat the Reapers, but it wouldn’t be easy. And it would require disciplined play, some puck luck, and a full 60-minute effort each night.
The league allows the higher seed to determine where Game 1 is played, and Hudson Valley chose to come to Watertown for Game 1, with games 2 and 3 (if necessary) in New York. For one period and all but 29 seconds of the second period, the Gold Kings were right where they wanted to be — defending their title and playing a brand of hockey that had them on the verge of taking Game 1. But something happened on the way to the locker room for the second period intermission, and the carry-over to the third turned an entertaining and suspenseful hockey game into a rout, with Hudson Valley ultimately taking Game 1 with a 7-2 victory. Game 2 is Saturday night April 11 in N.Y. at 7 p.m.
The Reapers are a quick-strike team, taking an innocent possession and turning it into a goal. After two weeks off, the Reapers didn’t look the least-bit rusty, and at 5:11 of the first period they turned good passing into a 1-0 lead. Eleven minutes later, they made it 2-0 as their number one line of Frack, Shepherd and Jackson worked their magic. When the Gold Kings Brandon Garneau was called for tripping 28 seconds later, it was as though a collective “oh oh” was heard from the Gold Kings fans.
What transpired next though changed the game for the next 19 minutes of play. Shorthanded, Tony DiCostanzo retrieved a puck that cleared the zone and eluded the Reapers pointmen. DiCostanzo flew towards Reapers goaltender Mike Rockwell, intent on turning the breakaway into a shorty to cut the lead in half. DiCostanzo was held just as he was about to shoot. While at first it seemed as though the referee signaled a penalty, instead he had signaled for a penalty shot. A huge moment in Game 1, indeed, and DiCostanzo was up to the task, deking Rockwell to his glove side and then switching to his backhand and lifting the puck into the net to make it Reapers 2, Gold Kings 1.
