Bridgewater-Raritan High School's highly successful ice hockey season now features the Skyland Cup championship.
Top-seeded Bridgewater-Raritan High School won its first Skyland Cup since the 2014-15 season with a 6-2 victory over sixth-seeded North Hunterdon Regional High School / Voorhees High School on Wednesday, February 19
Bridgewater-Raritan (21-3), ranked 16th in the state, erupted for the game’s first five goals against North Hunterdon / Voorhees (17-8) to put the Skyland Cup title game far out of reach late in the second period at Bridgewater Sports Arena in Bridgewater.
“I’ll say it once and I’ll say it again: the job is not over,” declared immediately after the win by Bridgewater-Raritan senior defenseman Tair Gafiatullin (two assists), who was named the Skyland Cup’s Most Valuable Player. “Winning the Skyland Cup was not our only goal.”
Against an up-and-coming North Hunterdon / Voorhees squad that surrendered a conference-best 45 total goals and collected a pair of overtime-upset tournament victories heading into the Skyland Cup title game, Bridgewater Raritan's offensive output of six goals on February 19 was tied for the most scored against the Lions all season.
Against second-seeded Pingry School, which had won the last four titles, in the semifinal round on Monday, February 17, North Hunterdon/Voorhees scored a 3-2 overtime victory to knock and bounce back from a 4-3 defeat against Pingry on January 23.
In other words, Bridgewater-Raritan clearly knew to disregard its previous 5-2 victory on January 13 over heavily-improved North Hunterdon / Voorhees, but the Panthers were prepared for the challenge in a packed Bridgewater Sports Arena.
While junior forward Alex Kotelnikov (one goal, three assists) secured a hat trick for the Panthers in their aforementioned regular-season meeting with the Lions, he was one of five different Bridgewater-Raritan players to score at least one goal in both teams’ Skyland Cup finals rematch.
Most notably, Gafiatullin and his fellow Bridgewater-Raritan defensemen produced a shutdown performance in the North Hunterdon/Voorhees attacking zone on the way to a 34-22 advantage in shots on goal, including an impressive 22-9 mark over the game’s last 29 minutes of regulation alone.
After Bridgewater-Raritan freshman goalie Justin Madison (20 saves) quickly stopped the game’s first shot just 18 seconds after the opening faceoff, the Panthers only allowed seven more shots over the remainder of the first period. Gafiatullin and sophomore forward Sasha Abolenskiy (two goals, three assists) then dished passes to senior forward Dylan Churpakovich (one goal), who opened the game’s scoring with 12:43 left in the first period.
In a span of 55 seconds, Bridgewater-Raritan then fired off two more shots before sophomore Andrei Stanislavovich (one goal) scored on assists from Gafiatullin and Kotelnikov to double the lead to 2-0 with 11:01 left in the first period.
With 1:58 left until the first intermission, Sean Fagan found Kotelnikov to produce the eventual winning goal and extend the Bridgewater-Raritan lead to 3-0 at the break.
Now sitting at a record of 21-3, the Panthers have now crossed off the coveted Skyland Cup box in 2024-25 and will make its highly-anticipated state tournament debut against No. 16 seeded Princeton High School (7-11) at 3 p.m. Monday, February 24, at Rock Ice Arena in Dunellen.
The winner will advance to the South Public Tournament sectional quarterfinals against the winner of the Monday, February 24, first-round matchup between eighth-seeded Monroe Township High School (12-6-1) and ninth-seeded Southern Regional High School (14-8-1) on Thursday, February 27, at the venue of the remaining team with the higher seed.
The semifinal round will take place on Monday, March 3, at the site of the higher-seeded team, while the state sectional finals will be contested at the Richard J. Codey Arena in West Orange on Thursday, March 6.
“This is a great experience for us and a big taste for what it takes to be at the top,” concluded Madison of Bridgewater Raritan's first Skyland Cup title in a decade. "We still have a goal, but this is one of our boxes checked off.”
“We’re not at our goal yet, but we’re going to get there, and I know we’re capable of it.”