BY JOHN DECOSTE
Kings County Register
For the second time in three years, the NKEC Titans are the NSSAF provincial D-2 boys' hockey champions.
NKEC won the title in thrilling fashion, edging host Barrington 1-0 March 24 on Reggie Rand's goal, assisted by Xavier Foley and Kris Bigelow, with 1:55 remaining.
Ian Brown was perfect in goal for the second time in the tournament, stopping 44 shots in front of a large and noisy partisan crowd of around 1,200.
“I'm just ecstatic,” head coach Roy Brown, a winner in his final high school game as NKEC head coach, said Monday.
“You can tell a team all year to believe and not lose faith, and you don't always get the results. When you see it actually come to pass, it's quite a feeling.”
To say NKEC wasn't the favorite to win would be an understatement. The Titans were seeded sixth in the six-team field, and Brown acknowledged, “if the tournament was played in any other region but ours, we wouldn't have been there.”
What the Titans were, as it turned out, was the best team.
“Two years ago, we were favored to win, and we were playing at home besides. That's not to say it didn't feel just as good, but this year's team was more of a 'from the ground up' experiment.”
This time around, “most of the kids didn't realize what they had done and how big it was until the final buzzer went.”
Second place finishers in the VHSHL after a solid second half of the schedule, the 2006/ 2007 Titans were “talented, but very young,” with just two players - goalie Brown and team captain Nathan Coffill - remaining from the 2005 champions.
“I can't say enough about what Ian and Nathan gave this team in terms of leadership,” said Coach Brown (also Ian's dad). “Ian made the saves and gave Nathan, who played his heart out all year, and the others a chance to win.”
NKEC opened with a 5-4 win over Barrington, the tournament host and Western Region runner-up who had defeated the Titans twice, both in overtime, in the regional semifinals.
This time, Barrington took an early 2-0 lead in front of the home fans, but NKEC managed to hang in and come back for the win, with Bigelow scoring all five goals.
“Kris, who was our leading scorer all year, hadn't scored in six playoff games - then he scores five in one game,” coach Brown said. “That's the kind of weekend it was.”
The Titans then took on SAERC from Port Hawkesbury and won 4-0, with Rand, Nick McQuade, Coffill and Keegan Wood scoring the goals and Brown earning the shutout.
Central Kings, the Western Region champions and the tournament's top seed, finished the round robin with a 2-1 record. The Gators defeated Eastern Shore 6-3 and Richmond Academy 11-1, but it was the game they lost, 6-2 to Barrington (a team they had beaten two straight in the regional final) Saturday, that was the real shocker.
When NKEC doubled Eastern Shore 4-2 in the other semifinal Saturday (on goals by Rand, Bigelow, Marco Visentin and Luke McDougall) to finish the round robin at 3-0, it put the Titans and Barrington into the final.
To Coach Brown, the win was “a real team effort, which it always is when you're able to win a championship. I'm proud of my whole team, especially my senior players and, in particular, the two that had been there before.”
Horton starts out tough in D-1
At the D-1 boys' provincials in Antigonish, the Western Region finalist Horton Griffins finished at 0-3, though they were more competitive than that record showed.
The Griffins drew a tough first-round opponent in the host Dr. J.H. Gillis squad, but the game ended up arguably their best of the tournament, a 2-1 loss in overtime. Derek Rodrigues scored the lone Horton goal.
The Griffins were nipped 3-2 by Glace Bay, then lost their final round robin game 7-2 to J.L. Ilsley, which went on to drop a 4-2 decision to Kings-Edgehill in the provincial final.
