Wish I could read it.
BROOKLYN, Ohio — St. Ignatius senior captain Nolan Ignacio’s goal 15 seconds into Saturday’s Brooklyn Regional final sparked a big day by the Wildcats’ offense, as St. Ignatius claimed a 6-2 victory over Padua to return to Columbus for the Frozen Four at Nationwide Arena. The Wildcats will have to wait until after Sunday’s regional finals are completed to see who they will be playing in the state semifinals.
St. Ignatius head coach Patrick O’Rourke has carefully crafted the blueprint for his team’s defense of last season’s state title. But he just needed his team to execute the way they are capable.
Saturday afternoon inside John M. Coyne Rec Center saw O’Rourke’s plan come to fruition. Six different Wildcats scored against the Bruins, the Cinderella of the Brooklyn bracket, for a return trip down I-71. “We were clicking, you never know how it’s going to go, both teams prepare all week long and try to watch video to find little things, but to get a goal 15 seconds in is great,” O’Rourke said. “It helps settle everybody down a little bit.”
Ignacio’s goal sent the Wildcat faithful wild early on, but the next goal would be harder to come by as the Bruins started to wake up on defense. The Wildcats’ second goal came off the stick of their other captain, Sam Elwell, to take a 2-0 lead into the first intermission. “It was 1-0 for a long time, then to get that second goal I thought it was huge,” O’Rourke said. “Then the second period was just outstanding. Came out, I think it was just the first half of the period we got four goals. So we kind of shut it down from there, just trying to get to next week healthy.”
Over a span of eight minutes to start the second period, the Wildcats scored four goals that left little doubt who would be representing the Brooklyn Regional at state. The Wildcats led 6-0 entering the third period. The Bruins got two power play goals in the third.
Crediting experience in these big moments, Ignacio said that the offense took another step forward Saturday with two games separating them from back-to-back titles. “We’ve got four good lines, four good pairs of (defensemen), we even have our JV team who we continually call kids up from,” Ignacio said. “There’s no other program like St. Ignatius. We’ve got the deepest program in history.”
Following O’Rourke’s blueprints, which included a Greater Ohio Hockey League title, two wins over arch rival St. Edward and now a regional title trophy, Ignacio said as a team they just have to stick together for a shot at school history. “We’ve just got to stay together as a team,” Ignacio said. “We know we’ve got the heart, we just have to put it all together to hopefully win the state championship.”
O’Rourke has historically had good program built on senior leadership. In his mind, if the Wildcats are going to win two more games, it will be by way of his senior class. “It’s a small class (of seniors), but they’ve got a couple tigers,” O’Rourke said. “They’ve got a couple guys that are driven almost unlike any guys I’ve had before. We’ll go as far as they take us, so we’ll see if they’ve got one more week left in the tank. “We’ve got our work cut out for us, that’s for sure. But every year I take our chances going to Columbus to try to win two tough games.”
As the stereo system boomed upbeat music from the Wildcats’ Brooklyn Rec Center locker room, which they call home during the regular season, on the other side of the wall, a much different and difficult conversation was being had by Padua head coach Perry Cohagan with his team around him. The No. 6 seed in the tournament, the Bruins played their best hockey in the postseason despite having just two seniors and one junior in the program. “We’ve played eight or nine freshmen regularly, the rest are sophomores,” Cohagan said. “So, this team had those bumps along the road that you get with young teams, but the amount of experience, the way they came together in the last month makes me extremely proud of just how well they’ve played together. “I’m going to mourn the seniors for a few days here, but as I told them, you have 48 hours to be upset, then we start over. We start over with a super talented, and now super experienced, group of young men and it’s going to be a lot of fun I think.”
