PLYMOUTH – Brother Rice found itself unable to completely dig out of an early hole and fell in the D2 state semifinals to Livonia Stevenson 6-2 Thursday night.
“I’m just really, really proud of our players, proud of our team. I’m proud of our leadership, our senior leadership,” Stevenson head coach David Mitchell said. “It’s a thrill to be here and to get back here. These guys wanted to be here and they wanted to make sure to not let it end here.”
Trailing 3-0 in the second period, the Warriors fought back to make it close. Isaiah House stepped off the bench and stepped into a pass from Davis Belt, blasting a shot in from the right circle to get Brother Rice on the board with 8:18 to play in the middle period. The Warriors got even closer when Belt snapped a shot through a crowd in front with 6:13 remaining in the game, cutting the deficit to a single goal at 3-2.
But Stevenson restored its two-goal advantage less than a minute later when Connor Buchanan scored on a two-on-one, and the Spartans were able to see the game off from there with the help of a couple more late goals, including an empty-netter.
Stevenson had also started hot in each of the first two periods, getting goals barely a minute into each one. Colin Stroble chipped a puck from the blue line that found its way in just 27 seconds into the game, giving Stevenson a 1-0 lead on the game’s first shot. Stevenson nearly made it 2-0 just one minute later when they got a man free on an odd-man rush, but the shot went wide, and the Warriors were able to settle into the game.
Brother Rice went on to dominate the period territorially and statistically – outshooting the Spartans 9-3 in the period. But for all of that, the Warriors struggled to create quality scoring chances, and Stevenson escaped the first period still leading 1-0.
The Spartans then started fast again in the second period getting early goals from Buchanan and from Christian Lang to extend their lead to 3-0 less than four minutes into the middle act.
“We battled,” Chaput said. “We talk about different points in the game being even more important than others. It’s the first minute of a period, last minute of a period that’s a huge momentum time. Give up a goal on the first shift of the game, and then turn around in the second (period) and do the same thing, it didn’t help us get our feet under us either of those periods. I thought we recovered fine in the first.”
They kept pushing all night, but the Warriors had just gotten too far behind and could not find their way back to even footing on the scoreboard.
The Warriors finish the year with a record of 16-11-2.
“It is a process. You turn over about half your squad every year. So it’s getting the new guys, the young guys, to understand what is going on. We don’t play an easy schedule, by design,” Chaput said. “But that’s learning how to play the game, and by the end, usually we figure it out.” He added that, “This year the team really pulled together, and everyone was on board.”
Photo gallery of Bloomfield Hills Brother Rice vs. Livonia Stevenson in a D2 hockey state semifinal
Matching Chaput's comments, Brother Rice will graduate 10 players and return about the same number next year.
“We’ve got some nice players that are younger, and we’ll start in. We’ll bring in half a team. We’ve got some talented younger guys,” Chaput said.
Stevenson (18-8-2) advances to Saturday’s Division 2 Championship game for the first time since 2016. The Spartans will play Flint Powers in the final.
“I’ve been here four years," Stevenson senior captain Owen Hall said. "The farthest we ever got was the quarters, so once again we have just been dreaming of this momentum, and our student section was out of this world, unbelievable today. It’s just amazing, an amazing feeling."
