Bishop Guertin goalie John Casey holds on to the puck after robbing North-Souhegan's Chase McBride (7) as fellow Cardinal Avery Abbott looks on during the Cards' 5-1 Division I quarterfinal win Saturday at Hudson's Cyclones Arena. (Telegraph photo by TOM KING)

HUDSON – The quarterfinal round of the Division I boys hockey tournament is always filled with upsets every year.

But that didn’t happen at Cyclones Arena on Saturday. How come?

“I think they ran out of gas,” Bishop Guertin coach Gary Bishop said after his 12-2 team pulled away from a tough Nashua North-Souhegan team in the latter part of the third period for a 5-1 win. “They had a great game plan, they boxed it in, they said, ‘Hey, we’re going to give you the perimeter, and nothing in the slots.’

“For 40 minutes, it worked pretty well. And then you try to go with two lines, it’s awfully hard to keep going. And even though you’re playing in tight in the box, every once in a while you’ve still got to strike.”

Exactly. The Saber-Titans, one of the more resilient teams around, could only strike on a Mike Dodge power play goal at 6:05 of the third period that cut a Guertin lead down to 2-1.

The Titans had life. But that ended when Guertin’s Declan Wilkie beat Saber-Titan netminder Colin Duckless with a wrister just 1:35 later, and that began a flurry of three BG goals that closed the door and sent the Cards to a Wednesday night semifinal vs. familiar foe Concord at Manchester’s JFK Coliseum.

“At 2-1, I thought we had a good shot, more than a good shot,” North-Souhegan coach Bill Kotsifas said. “I thought we we might actually pull this off. A lot of times you’re down 2-0, the next guy who scores the next goal scores the next two.

“I’ve said this all year long, these guys fight hard, they don’t give up, they’re just great kids. Ran out of gas.”

Duckless made 47 stops as he was constantly under siege, a stellar performance.

“He’s been great all year and he was great today,” Kotsifas said. “Hey, 2-1, with about 10 minutes to go, you’ve got to be proud of that. I told them to keep their heads up.”

Guertin had five different goal scorers, with Derek Amaral and Mike Kiely each having a goal and two assists. Kiely’s score was the last in the final three minutes. He assisted on the first, by Sam Cronin, at 2:19 of the second period, as the Cards were kept off the board in a scoreless first despite outshooting the 5-5 Saber-Titans 14-1.

Kiely assisted on the second goal as well, that coming of the stick of Amaral at 12:11 of the second.

Dodge’s power play goal got everyone thinking upset, but Luke Vogel (Quinn Cepiel assist) followed Wilkie’s goal two minutes later to make it 4-1 and it was over. Ryan and Sean Kelley also had assists for BG.

While Duckless shined, BG netminder John Casey came through with a big point blank stop on Saber-Titan Chase McBride on the last of five N-S power plays with the score still 3-1.

“Casey *14 saves) played well tonight,” Bishop said. “He didn’t see a lot of shots, but he stopped the ones he had to.”

Soon after that Guertin pulled away, upset averted.

“Toward the end, they realized a couple goals came from give-and-go’s,” Bishop said. “Once you get it, go to the net. We were on the bench yelling that the whole game. Somebody has to go to the net. … Go to the net, go to the net hard.”

The Cards finally did just that, and will certainly have to do the same on Wednesday.

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