Ice hockey: St. Paul's rallies past Gilman in third period

Ryan Heacox broke a 3-3 deadlock with 2:19 remaining in the final period and Sean Baker added an empty-netter 1:12 later to send St. Paul's home from the Mt. Pleasant Ice Arena with a hard-fought 5-3 victory over Gilman on Wednesday night.

While the Crusaders (2-5) prevailed, 6-2, in their first meeting with the Greyhounds, this time Gilman (1-8-1) gave as good as it got until faltering down the stretch of the Maryland Interscholastic Athletic Association B Conference contest.

"We played pretty well, but a couple of bounces didn't go our way," Gilman coach Zach Collins said.

Nor did the strategy to gain a man advantage by pulling goalie Jeff Loube after the Crusaders took the lead for good, although the plan worked well enough for senior center Mike Schahfer to unleash a wicked slap shot that was impeded by St. Paul's Whit Schweizer's chest save.

It only took Baker a few seconds to swipe the puck into the vacated net from the blue line to give St. Paul's a two-goal bulge with 1:07 left.

That, in essence, sealed the deal for the Crusaders, who found out the hard way that the B Conference is rife with parity.

"Any team in the B Conference can beat any other team in the conference," St. Paul's coach Eric Smith confirmed.

That's why he urged his team to elevate its play before it was too late.

Trailing, 3-2, after a power-play goal by Gilman's Tucker Plunkert with 35 seconds to go in the middle period, Baker touched in the equalizer with 8:36 remaining.

"We started to do a lot of the things we had forgotten to do over the Christmas break," Smith said. "We were out of position against a team that came out skating hard and out-hustled us."

Scoring summary

Gilman goals-Brice Tucker; Mike Schahfer; Tucker Plunkert

Gilman assists-Plunkert; Will Herman; Schahfer

Gilman saves-Jeff Loube, 29

St. Paul's goals-Griff Stulman, 2; Sean Baker, 2; Ryan Heacox

St. Paul's assists-Baker,2; Stulman; Heacox; Andrew Nelson

St. Paul's saves-Whit Schweizer, 29

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