Maybe this one was actually worth the wait.

Yes, that agonizing day was a year ago today, when the Bishop Guertin High School boys lost an excruciating three-plus overtime title game to this same Concord Crimson Tide that it was facing Saturday evening at Manchester’s SNHU Arena. So winning last night 1-0 on Jordan O’Hearn’s goal especially in – gulp – sudden death overtime had to be poetic justice for the long-suffering Cards.

The message to the several new players on the roster in December who had heard about last March was “You want to know how that felt? Let us tell you how it felt,” Guertin coach Gary Bishop said.

Well, guess what. When the horn sounded at the end of regulation, No. 1 Concord and No. 3 Bishop Guertin were even steven at zippo. Yeah, 0-0.Everyone in the SNHU Arena press box in Manchester was ready to hunker down for the night. We’d seen this before.

So did the coaches and a small faction of of the kids playing.

“When we went to overtime,” Cards defenseman Gavin Santos said, “all I could think of was last year, four overtimes, deja vu. Coming back in this hallway, that’s all I could remember.”

It was the kind of game when while neither team could score, you held your breath when one of them actually had a chance.

“I held my breath all day,” Bishop said. “I just didn’t want to go to four (OTs).”

Concord coach Duncan Walsh said to himself “Can we do this again? Can we win in overtime again?”

We should have known this was going to happen. The game before featured the Division III title game between Berlin-Gorham and Kingswood, and that featured two goals in the final 30 seconds of regulation and wasn’t won by Kingswood until 1:09 left in the first overtime.

“There weren’t a lot of goals scored in Division I and III,” Bishop said with a chuckle.”

Or in this one. It was such a defensive game, things didn’t get up and down with real legit scoring chances until the overtime. Walsh knew that Guertin was going to try to make life tough for his top line of Nolan Walsh, Tyler Morin, and Chad LaRiviere. They had watched that line zip up and down the JFK Coliseum ice vs. Windham in the semis and score at will.

“They were there watching Nolan and Chad have a night,” Walsh said. “That’s their plan, you ‘ve got to shut them down, be in their face,and not give them room. And I thought we did a good job of that with their guys.”

“Very rarely did we get bad match,” Bishop said. “Most of the time we got either our one or two (lines) against them. I think they only had maybe two or three shifts the whole game when they got our third line, and we got them off quick.”

The result? Zip-zip after 45 minutes of hockey. Get ready for a lot more, that’s what we were all thinking.

“I was happy going into the third 0-0 ,” Bishop said. “Now we’ve got a 15 minute game. I think we can beat ’em in a 15-minute game. Which we didn’t. It took a few more minutes.”

That brough a chuckle.

Concord had two power plays in regulation but couldn’t really even pose a threat. “You think back to last year, there’s a lot of irony,” Walsh said. “BG had two power plays in overtime last year and didn’t score. … Overtime, one shot, and that’s the way it is. Overtime’s scary in hockey, it’s called sudden death for a reason.

“I’m disappointed, you want to win, our kids played hard, played the right way,” It was entertaining for the people who paid the $10 or whatever.”

Bishop Guertin’s Owen Murphy, left, celebrates with teammate Carter Santoro (12) after the Cards beat Concord 1-0 Saturday for the Division I title at Manchester’s SNHU Arena. (Telegraph photo by TOM KING)

At least this year it was the last game of the four-game NHIAA title tilt extravagnza. Not like last year, when the Hanover and Portsmouth-Oyster River girls were all in uniform and on skates sitting in the stands wondering if they’d ever get a chance to play their final.

In the end, maybe it was poetic justice. But when you look up at the scoreboard and see just 18 Concord shots in 45 minutes of hockey, if the Cards didn’t win this one, well …

“It’s just awesome,” Santos said, “that we pulled it out.”

And did it this time with just six minutes and 31 seconds of the first OT.

Tom King can be reached at tking@nashuatelegraph.com, or on X @Telegraph _TomK.