Essex's Jack Cabanaw and Soutb Burlington's Bernie Thibault will be counted on to slow down opposing attacks on Saturday.
The top two boys hockey teams in Vermont will face off this Saturday at Cairns Arena. Unbeaten Essex (13-0-1) travels to take on South Burlington (14-1) in the only regular season meeting of the Division I championship contenders. Saturday’s winner will have the inside track for the top seed in the upcoming Division I hockey playoffs.
The Rebels enter Saturday winners of thirteen straight contests. South Burlington picked up their biggest win of the season last week in dominating fashion, topping BFA 6-2. The six goals were the most allowed by BFA in any game this season and led to just their second loss on the season.
“Against BFA we did a good job of executing our game plan which was to do the little things better than they did,” says South Burlington head coach Sean Jones. “We controlled all three zones, looked for and capitalized on our chances, beat them to loose pucks and limited our time in the penalty box.”
The senior-heavy Rebels have been an offensive force this season. South Burlington is averaging 5½ goals per game, second-best in D-I behind BFA. As well as the Rebels have started this season, Jones feels Essex is still the team to beat.
“Essex is the best team in the state,” says Jones. “Any team that wants a chance at beating them will have to outwork them and play a composed, disciplined game. We will have to win the one-on-one battles and hope that the puck bounces go our way.”
The Hornets come into Saturday having not lost in their last 28 games. The last regular season game the Hornets lost was 13 months ago—a 4-3 loss to BFA. Since January 5 of last year, Essex has put together a 26-0-2 regular season record. The Hornets stormed through last year’s D-I playoffs as the top seed before coming up one game short of their 14th state title. Essex fell 1-0 to CVU
Essex has allowed the fewest goals in Division I so far this season behind a strong, junior-heavy defense and an all-state senior goalkeeper in Pat Campbell. The Hornets have allowed just less than 1.6 goals per game so far this season but face a tough challenge against South Burlington.
“South Burlington is an excellent team. They are fleet, skilled, well-coached, and will be formidable in their own barn,” said Essex head coach Bill O’Neil. “We will need to rise to the occasion and bring our ‘A’ game to be successful.”
“The senior-heavy Rebels have been an offensive force this season”. They have 3 forwards and a goalie as seniors….not a great deal of seniors in my opinion. The majority of the scoring has been from a few soph’s and a few jr’s. They will be in the hunt next year as well with all the defensemen coming back and most of the forwards, with 2 decent goalies. Time to get it done this year first.
Fair enough. “Experienced-laden Rebels” would have been better phrasing.
That would be bery correct as most of these role players played many minutes last year when they were rebuilding. Trey, are you going to be attending the game tomorrow?
Yes, I will be there. Appears to be a very even matchup so it should be a fun game.
“all State goalkeeper”, yea not at all, try really good team in front of him with a good defense, that doesnt cause him to face many shots
Essex defense is really good, but Campbell was named to various all-state teams