The puck is behind Bishop Guertin's Jssmine Shattuck (3), who is right on the doorstep of Berlin goalie Olivia O'Neil while BG's Carly Green and Berlin's Blais look on during Saturday's game at Skate 3 Arena in Tyngsborough, Mass. (Telegraph photo by TOM KING)

TYNGSBOROUGH, Mass. — They all leaped for joy, but then the Bishop Guertin girls hockey players knew where to head next.

Right after Aine Kelly’s second goal of the the game Saturday at 2:15 of sudden death overtime gave the Cards a 3-2 win over previously unbeaten Berlin-Gorham-Kennett, they went right over to pound the glass in front of the Skate 3 Arena stands, where injured standout Jasmine Shattuck was sitting. They wanted to pay tribute to their fallen senior, who was a dominant factor through much of the first two periods before leaving the game in pain late in the second with a shoulder injury.

“Very exciting,” Kelly said. “Good for Jasmine Shattuck.”

This game proved a lot of things to the Cards, who are a tight-knit team to say the least. It proved they could overcome that injury adversity, but also shows how they’ve involved a lot of players the entire season. Grace Spengler began the game-winning play, zipping down right wing before flipping it in front of the net and Berlin-Gorham-Kennett goalie Olivia O’Neil. Right there was Kelly to tip it home.

“They’ve been working really well all year,” Guertin coach Phil DeVita said.

“Having all the girls step up, it’s been a team effort all along. We lose one girl, we need to step up and we have. They just dug deep, put the pucks to the net, and that’s what it is in overtime.”

“Our coaches have been talking about rebounds for awhile, and I really wanted to show my effort” Kelly said. “It couldn’t have done without Grace Spengler, who popped it right in front of the net and I just got it back in the net.”

“Grace did everything we asked her to do as a freshman this year, she took the puck wide,” DeVita said. “We tell the girls to just go to the net, and they did exactly what we asked.”

The win puts the defending champion Cards atop the standings at 11-1, now owning a tiebreaker over the 11-1 Mountaineers. Guertin is 3-0 in OT games this year.

“It was evenly matched all around, the game could’ve gone either way,” BGK coach Craig Bartoli said. “Just one of those games, a couple of puck bounces didn’t go our way. They had a nice goal in the overtime, they crashed the net. We had a couple of chances in the overtime, but didn’t capitalize.”

Guertin not only needed to bounce back from the loss of Shattuck, but also from losing a 2-0 lead. After a scoreless first period, Kelly got her first goal in similar fashion to her game-winner, right down low at 8:13 of the second period. A minute later, Gracie Menicci flipped the puck in the air toward the net from just inside the blue line and it deflected off Mountaineer Emma Dziedzic and went into the net on the fly for a 2-0 BG lead. Katherine Oskirko and Riley Goldthwaite were given the assists.

The visitors tied it on two breakaway goals by Laney Downs, one at 12:29 of the second period and the other at 6:37 of the third, beating goalie Ciara Fallon (12 saves).

Bishop Guertin’s Aine Kelly reaches for the puck during Saturday’s game vs. Berlin-Gorham-Kennett in which she scored the game-winner in OT at Skate 3 in Tyngsborough, Mass. (Telegraph photo by TOM KING)

Before Downs’ first goal, Shattuck and Mountaineer standout Ava Bartoli collided and went down in a heap. By the time Bartoli got up, Shattuck had already skated to the bench in obvious pain and was done for the day

“We needed to make a little adjustment there,” DeVita said. “We lost a little of Jas’s experience, and the girls stepped up. They came at us but I think we matched them pretty well, and keep the puck in the zone as best we could.”

“They’re a good team,” Craig Bartoli said of the Cars. “They match up well against us, I’m sure we’ll see them in the playoffs at some time.”

And hopefully Shattuck will be on the ice for that.

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