Hanover girls hockey makes it a decade of dominance with win over Exeter in title game

MANCHESTER - A stingy defensive showing and a habit of scoring late in periods carried the Hanover High School girls hockey team to a 4-1 victory over Exeter in the NHIAA state championship game Saturday at SNHU Arena.

The title marks Hanover’s 10th straight and 11th over the 12 years the NHIAA has offered girls hockey as a varsity sport. The fifth-seeded Marauders (14-5-1) finished unbeaten against in-state competition with their only blemish of any kind being a 2-2 tie at Exeter on Jan. 3.

The second-seeded Blue Hawks (15-5-1) finished runner-up to the Marauders for the third straight season.

The Marauders scored all of their goals inside the final four minutes of a period.

Hanover opened the game’s scoring with 1:21 remaining in the first period, when sophomore Natalie Morhun scored in front on a counter rush.

“There’s no question goals at the ends of periods are good to come by and you hate to give them up,” Marauders coach John Dodds said. “We talk about that. They’re aware of that.”

Violet Sperry and Maggie Lee each logged a goal over the final 3:08 of the second period to give the Marauders a 3-0 advantage entering the second intermission. Sperry scored on an uncontested shot from the left circle. Lee’s tally came following a behind-the-net feed from Clara Boland with 2:21 remaining in the middle stanza.

“We got that second goal, which was huge, but the next shift was probably the most important shift of the game,” Dodds said of his team’s third goal. “They went out and popped one in just with some hard work behind the net.”

Hanover senior Emma Tysinger capped the game’s scoring with a short-handed empty-net goal that came with 1:07 remaining.

Shauna Vadeboncoeur, a freshman, tallied Exeter’s lone goal off a behind-the-net pass from senior Dakota Markey 5:40 into the third period, cutting Hanover’s lead to 3-1.

Led by Tysinger and fellow senior blue-liner Bryn Kable, Hanover made life easy on its sophomore goaltender, Rebekah Rudd, who finished with nine saves. The Marauders outshot Exeter, 25-4, over the opening two periods and 32-10 overall.

The Blue Hawks struggled to maintain possession in the offensive zone throughout the contest.

“You come in and you know about their ability to skate and dominate possession of a game and pressure the net,” Exeter coach Geoff Taylor said of the Marauders. “But the big thing that stood out to me was just the smothering defense. When you’re struggling to find each other to create time and space out there, it makes it tough to do the things that you want to do.”

Kable said with the Marauders lacking a prolific scorer this year, the team put a focus on its blue-line play.

“I think that without having an obvious player who can just snipe every shot they take, everyone on the team has had to step up and step into their own role a bit more, which has put more of an emphasis on team defense,” said Kable, who assisted on Sperry’s goal. “Because we’ve been scoring a little bit less than in past years but we’ve been focusing on keeping them out of the net too.”

Hanover allowed two goals over its three-game postseason run.

Blue Hawks senior netminder Izzy Day made 29 saves.

“It feels amazing,” Lee said of the win. “It feels like we’re doing it for our coaches and our teammates and I feel so lucky that we get to have (a) 10-peat.”