It was a wild celebraton for the Bishop Guertin girls hockey team as they mob Kate Simpson after her goal in OT gave the Cards a 5-4 semifinal win over Hanover in Concord Tuesday night. (Telegraph photo by TOM KING)

CONCORD – There was a sense of finality that was starting to overcome Bishop Guertin High School’s Kate Simpson on Tuesday night at Everett Arena.

And she didn’t like the feeling.

So Simpson did something about it, whacking at the puck until it finally found the back of the net at 5:46 of sudden death overtime to give the Cardinals a dramatic 5-4 girls hockey semifinal win over Hanover and a berth in Saturday’s Division I finals vs. the unbeaten St. Thomas-Winnacunnet-Dover co-op.

“Going into overtime we knew, I’m a senior, and if we lost, this would’ve been my last game ever in hockey,” Simpson, who actually tallied two goals, said. “There was a huge frenzy in front of the net, everybody’s whacking it, whacking it, and I just whacked it and I see the back of the net and I see the puck in there. We all were so excited.”

It was a much different feeling than the one Simpson and the rest of the 16-0 Cardinals had when they saw a puck go off the skate of Hanover’s Natalie Morhun and into the net with 30.6 seconds left, ruining a what looked like what was going to be a 4-3 win and send things to overtime tied at 4 rather than everyone home.

The Cards had the break before OT to bounce back emotionally.

“We broke it down after that third period,” Guertin coach Scott Ciszek said, “and just try to build them back up and tell them that this was their game to win, this was their game to lose, go out and give it everything they’ve got every shift.

“We’ve got nine seniors on the team and they each wanted to go to that last game.”

Guertin dominated puck possession, and they outshot Hanover (12-3) by a whopping 34-14 tally. But the Marauders, who never led and were missing a couple of players, including the quarantined key freshman forward Loralei Seelig, had an answer for every BG goal except the last one.

“We’re not normally a two-line team,” Hanover coach John Dodds said. “We didn’t have quite the jump I normally expected. … We weren’t taking advantage of the chances we were getting….

“But it was like the last time we played them. One team would get a goal, then the other one would come back. It was pretty back and forth, two evenly matched teams. But that’s (Bishop Guertin) a good team. They’re going to be hard to beat in the finals.”

No doubt. The Cards grabbed a 1-0 lead on Julie McLaughlin’s wrister from beyond the faceoff circle at 11:15 of the first but Hanover answered on Danielle Rudd’s goal at 13:56 to make it a 1-1 game after one.

In the second, BG had goals by Simpson, assisted by Scanlon – she also assisted on the game-winner – and Brooke Yabroudy (Scanlon’s second of three assists), while Hanover answered with goals by Lily Seelig (assists Sage McGinley Smith and Morhun) and Maeve Lee (unassisted).

But Jenna Lynch, kept silent by the Marauders for the bulk of two periods, put Guertin ahead 4-3 with just 53.7 seconds left. She converted a Simpson centering pass after a Hanover turnover behind the Marauders goalie Rebekah Rudd (28 stops).

“We were doing everything we could,”Ciszek said. “Their goalie was keeping them in the game, she’s a really good goalie. And we tried to break it down and play more defensively in the third (keeping Lindsay Hult and Grace Menicci back), which was working, until that crazy goal went in.”

You want crazy? Things almost ended in a bad way for BG about 15 seconds into the overtime when Hanover’s Lily Seelig fired a shot from the point that Cardinals goalie Sarah King (10 stops, including one on a breakaway) had just barely diverted to the side, and it kicked off the post and out. A matter of inches.

“It almost looked like it was going five-hole,” Dodds said. “I almost had my hands in the air.”

Instead, the Cards had hands, gloves, sticks and everything else airborne just over five minutes later. They now face a fellow unbeaten Saints-Warriors-Wave team at Dover Ice Arena Saturday at 1:30 p.m.

“I think we had the fresher legs in the overtime,” Ciszek said. “(Simpson) plays hard, she skates hard, she’s always in front of the net. She’s one of those go-to girls. … Last time she had a hat trick against this team, and this time she finished them off.”

Simply because she didn’t want her hockey career to be finished.

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