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First a title, then Player of Year honors for BG’s Lynch

By Tom King - Staff Writer | Mar 17, 2021

Bishop Guertin's Jenna Lynch gets contratulated by the Cadinal coaches after the team's 6-1 title win this past weekend in Dover. (Telegraph photo by TOM KING)

NASHUA – Depth and talent. As well as the Player of the Year

That combination is something that was clearly apparent to those close to the Bishop Guertin High School girls hockey program, that the Cardinals possessed after a couple of games to start the season. It added up to a state championship.

The Cards had the right additions to last year’s quarterfinal team, not the least was sophomore Jenna Lynch, who was named Player of the Year by the New Hampshire Hockey Coaches Association. Lynch, the sophomore from Brookline, had well over 50 points and was clearly the best player on the ice in just about every game.

And, her line with junior Julie McLaughlin, who came of age last year as a sophomore, was unstoppable.

“That gave Julie that other player,” Guertin coach Scott Ciszek said, “so we could make sure one line was just as good as the other.”

Senior co-captain Brooke Yabroudy could see the difference in this year’s Cardinals right away. She missed the first couple of games of the Bishop Guertin High School girls hockey team’s unbeaten state championship season, but when she returned, she knew this was a different team than the other BG teams hockey teams she had been on.

“When I got back from quarantine and hit the ice that first day, I knew we had something special. I knew we’d go really far. I’m so happy we won.”

And others around the state noticed.

“They had great depth,” St. Thomas-Winnacunnet-Dover coach Al Oliveira said. “They had three exceptionally skilled players (likely Hult, Lynch, McLaughlin), they could move the puck well, physical, they play strong, they play hard. Very similar to the way Hanover played over the years.

“Hanover had three lines running. Scott had two lines running, but constant, you couldn’t tell the difference between the first and second line. It didn’t matter who was out there. They were there,, they were strong.”

Before the 6-1 title game, Oliveira had a chat with his former boss, current BG athletic director Ryan Brown, who was the AD for years at St. Thomas.

“He look at me and said, ‘You know, we can score,'” Oliveira recounted. “I said, ‘Ryan, we scored almost as many as you did.’ … We’ll see what happenes when we get out there.’

“But they played really well (defensively). They kept our shots down, very well played.”

That was partly by design in the final period, as Ciszek had his team focus on that end of the ice. “We knew they were going to come out hard in the third period,” he said. “I think it worked out well, it really limited their breakaways in the third period and the actual puck possession time in our zone.”

But the Cards were in a zone all year, and it showed.

ALL STATE TEAM

FIRST TEAM – Jenna Lynch, fd, Bishop Guertin; Sage McGinley Smith, fd., Hanover; Kylie Youngclaus, fd., St. Thomas-Winnacunnet-Dover; Lindsay Hult, def, Bishop Guertin; Natalie Morhun, def, Hanover.

SECOND TEAM – Kathryn Sinpson, fd, Bishop Gueritn; Ellie Karatzas, St. Thomas-Winnacunnet-Dover, fd; Joanna Dustin, fd, Concord; Maria Armaganian, def, Concord; Skyler Bednarak, def, St. Thomas-Winnacunnet-Dover.

HONORABLE MENTION – Julie McLaughlin, fd, Bishop Guertin; Jaelyn Kelleher, fd., Concord; Natalie Lessard, fd, Oyster River-Portsmouth; Lauren Riviera, def, Pinketon; Kendall Cassidy, def, Bedford.

Player of Year: Jenna Lynch, BG.

Coach of the Year: Scott Ciszek, BG.

(Look for more on the BG girls hockey team in this Sunday’s Telegraph).

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