The Bishop Guertin girls hockey team celebrats its 6-1 state title win over St. Thomsas-Winnacunnet-Dover on Saturday. (Telegraph photo by TOM KING)

DOVER – A dream come true.

That’s what Bishop Guertin High School senior defenseman Lindsay Hult called the Cardinals’ one-sided 6-1 state championship win over the co-op St.Thomas-Winnacunnet-Dover squad Saturday afternoon at Dover Ice Arena.

“Yes,” Hult said. “I thought this was super special because every year we’re like ‘Maybe we’ll have a chance’. And this year we didn’t know what to expect.

“Then (once the season began) we’re like ‘We definitely have a chance. I just never thought, because we’ve never gone this far. … It was unreal. I was so happy we made it this far.”

They won their first girls hockey title ever with offense being their best defense, capping a 17-0 season that had about three anxious moments insereted into long stretches of pure domination.

And Saturday, after a 1-0 first period, it became just that as the Cardinals scored three times to take a 4-1 lead into their final intermission of the season.

“That’s the same thing we’ve been preaching all year,” Guertin coach Scott Ciszek said, “puck possession, pressure and execution. First pressure we had the pressure on, but not as much as we did in the second period.”

The Cardinals knew they were facing a tough foe, as the Saints were a fellow unbeaten, and had a top-notch goalie Diana Pivorotto. They grabbed a 1-0 lead on a Brooke Yabroudy goal, assisted by Julie McLaughlin – two of the mainstays all year – off a scramble in front of the net at 6:07 of the first.

“This year our team clicked better than it ever had,” said Yabroudy, a hockey player for 12 years who began the season in quarantine. “And this year we worked harder than we ever have.”

That’s the way it stood going into the second period, and Ciszek knew his team needed, despite outshooting the Saints by a whopping 16-2 margin, to raise things up a notch.

“In the second period we tightened up and it showed,” Ciszek said. “It was just about breaking things down a little bit more and making sure they were doing what they were supposed to be doing.

“We were fixing a couple of small areas. Part of that was pressure; we were letting them skate unattested into the neutral zone. We made sure we keyed in on that because games are won and lost there.”

And the second period, also, has been a Guertin bugaboo at times this season. That wasn’t the case yesterday as two goals 55 seconds apart early in the middle period made the difference.

Jill Scanlon, a sophomore, converted a Kate Simpson feed just 55 seconds into the middle period to give BG a 2-0 lead. It ended up being the only other goal the Cards would need, but they also got scores from another sophomore, Jenna Lynch – her first of two goals to go with an assist – and Hult. Lynch’s goal, a blast from just inside the blue line, was assisted by McLaughlin and Hult’s came unassisted on a burst into the zone at 3:04. That’s three goals just over three minutes in, a 4-0 BG lead, and a probable title.

“I think coming out of the chute the girls were a little nervous,” STWD coach Al Oliveira said. “And in the first three minutes of the second period, we lost focus. And then BG played great on top of it.”

Ciszek said there was a plan of attack on Pivirotto.

“We had to either create a lot of movement down low, or get her down and go high,” Ciszek said. “If you were going in alone (like Lynch and Hult) you were trying to go high; if you had teammaates with you, you were trying to get her to move.”

St. Thomas’ only goal of the game came from Olivia Kimball, assisted by Juliana Grella, at 6:46 of the second.

Guertin played more of a defensive style in the third period up 4-1. “We didn’t want to give them any breakaways,” Ciszek said.

But yet they still scored twice, Lynch unassisted and Simpson (from Lynch and Scanlon), as there was really no doubt.

Pivirotto ended up with 29 stops while BG senior Sarah King wasn’t busy but was reliable with seven stops.

“Once we got the second and the third one in, we knew we could lay back and the pressure was on them,” Ciszek said. “We expected them to come out hard in the third period. I think it worked out well.”

Everything worked out well for this team, which got an overtime goal from Simpson in the semifinals to beat Hanover, which had dominated the sport with 10 straight state titles – begun in 2010 with a win over BG in the Cards’ only other finals appearance – until it lost in the semis last year.

“We just concentrated on not only one game at a time but we broke it down into each period being a game,” Ciszek said, “and talking about it in between periods and making the adjustments.

The girls were accepting of the adjustments we were giving them. They were coming out there and implementing whatever we said. That’s a key. …

“I feel proud, proud of the girls. They came out, they were on a mission, and you know what?

“They accomplished it.”

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