WHITE RIVER JUNCTION — Hartford High’s boys hockey team roughed up Northfield last Saturday inside Wendell A. Barwood Arena, winning, 10-0, to remain undefeated and atop the VPA Division II standings.
More frightening to the Hurricanes’ Vermont foes, however, might have been the display outside the rink, where player placards for the hosts’ Senior Day celebration were stuck into a snow bank.
There were only three of them.
“This is a young team,” said Hartford principal Nelson Fogg, as he watched the red-, white- and blue-clad skaters overwhelm the Marauders. “They’re fun to watch, and they could be in for a really good two-year run.”
Hartford’s roster also features six juniors, six sophomores and six freshmen. It’s the culmination of a talent wave that swept into the Upper Valley Storm youth program roughly a decade ago and appears to have not yet peaked. The Hurricanes (15-0-0), who host second-place Mount Mansfield on Wednesday, boast speed and hustle, passing and positioning, solid size and big hearts.
“Every time they hit the ice, their skates are going 1,000 miles per hour,” said Fogg, who served a long stint as his school’s girls hockey coach and who isn’t given to effusive praise. “When the puck needs to be moved, it’s always moved.”
Woe to the defender who, no doubt frustrated by that movement, overcommits in an attempt to check a Hurricane.
Center Blaine Gour began a scoring play Saturday with his back to the sideboards and high in the Marauders’ zone. Just before receiving a lateral pass, the junior center spotted wing James McReynolds cutting behind him and towards the near corner.
Gour didn’t stop the puck, merely bumping it off his backhand and the boards. McReynolds, already close to full speed after two or three strides, flew on to the feed, looking as if he intended to curve along the bottom of the circle and toward the near goalpost. A Northfield defender jumped at him, taking the bait.
In one, fluid motion and a spray of snow, McReynolds, a left-handed shot, came to a two-footed halt on the circle’s outer hash marks. The junior pivoted 180 degrees onto his backhand while the defender stumbled into the wall. Skating in on the Marauders’ goaltender, McReynolds executed the slightest of forehand shot fakes before scoring on his backhand at the far post.
“They move the puck so well that you get mesmerized by it a little bit and then starting chasing it around the zone,” said Lyndon Institute coach Jerome Roberge, whose third-place team lost, 8-0, to Hartford two days later. “Then your system has broken down. They’re going to be tough to beat the rest of the way.”
Hartford finished 3-6-0 a year ago, and it appeared at times that its proverbial wheels were falling off. Standout goaltender Colby Boyce had enrolled at Meriden’s Kimball Union Academy to start the school year, leaving freshman Davey Bradley in the apparent role of overmatched starter.
Brothers Bentley and Aidan Boonyaharn, two of the Hurricanes’ best offensive players, exited the team under unhappy circumstances midway through the season, and any talk about the program snapping its 12-year state title drought seemed farfetched.
“I think a lot of people panicked last year, after thinking we’d be better,” said 24th-year coach Todd Bebeau, who played for Hartford’s first championship team in 1984-85 and has coached its other four title squads. “They were wondering what happened. But I knew what we had and what the process was going to entail.”
Without COVID-19 making hash of the schedule and Aidan Boonyaharn back in the fold for his senior campaign, the current Hurricanes got off to a roaring start with consecutive 10-1 victories. They’ve outscored their opponents by a combined 98-23 and would have likely surrendered fewer goals if not for Bebeau giving his reserves significant ice time in all but the tightest contests.
Hartford has produced seven shorthanded goals and surrendered none, and its power play is scoring at nearly a 40% clip. It’s outshooting opponents by an average of 44-13 per game and has given up one or fewer goals eight times, a reflection of its coach’s commitment to defense, even during a season of offensive splendor.
“We want to force people to play our style, which is fast, unselfish hockey,” Bebeau said. “But those two or three shifts a game where we’re pinned in our end, we have to have the mindset that we’re going to play with structure and win battles. That dictates whether we win or lose. The offensive part, I’m not as concerned with.”
The Hurricanes’ first line of center Gour and wings McReynolds and Ozzy DeFelice is more than worth the price of admission. The junior trio is in its third consecutive season together, with Gour posting 12 goals and 19 assists, DeFelice 11 goals and 14 assists and McReynolds 12 goals and 12 assists.
The latter, who’s worked tirelessly on his skating and agility during recent summers, is only 5-7 and 150 pounds but is vastly improved and retains a chippy edge that’s led to a team-high 24 penalty minutes.
Want to take your chances with the second line? Aidan Boonyaharn has 15 goals and 12 assists, sophomore Ezra Mock has 11 goals and 15 assists and junior Joseph Barwood has 14 goals and 12 assists.
The third line of diminutive freshmen Nolan Morlock and Nick Daniels riding alongside hulking senior Gordon Willey would be first or second over the boards for some programs. The fourth line of sophomores Jaden Poirier and Nate Clark and Logan Caffrey is receiving an inordinate amount of playing time and development because of frequent, lopsided scores.
Defensively, 6-foot-4, 235-pound junior Connor Tierney leads the way. Senior captain Simon Spaulding is a reliable, stay-at-home rearguard and a mature leader, and sophomore Lochlan Park is the grandson of Hockey Hall of Fame member Brad Park. Freshman Cavan Benjamin and sophomore Matt Hayes also see time.
“Connor’s the big man on this team,” said Spaulding, whose father and uncle played for the Hurricanes and who skated his first four years of youth hockey while his family lived in Germany. “He can hold it down in the defensive end, but he also makes insane offensive plays. You don’t usually see good hands on big guys like that, but he plays every part of the game well.”
Bradley might be the least noticeable part of this bunch, and that’s good news for any goaltender. The fewer shots and less pressure he faces, the better. His backup, junior Sean Kelliher, only learned to skate three years ago but backstopped Hartford to a pair of victories while Bradley was out.
“We have kids with high hockey IQ and who have played with each other since they were very small,” Bebeau said. “I’ve watched this group come up, and it’s amazing that they used to be the ones who stood in line to give the high school kids high-fives. Now they’re the ones taking the responsibility of playing for their school.”
Bebeau bore that burden with the utmost sincerity as a teenager, he and his friends playing pickup games at Wilder’s Frost Park and being in the first wave of youth players to inhabit what was then called the Board of Recreation Rink. The ice resurfacer was a blockish thing towed behind a yellow tractor that spewed diesel exhaust through the chain-link fence mounted above the sideboards.
The structure’s sides were open to sub-zero temperatures and the winds whipping across Taft Flat, sometimes forcing two games to be intermingled. Two teams would play their first period, then retire to tiny dressing rooms to thaw out while two squads completed their own contest’s initial stanza. On it went for six periods and countless, pain-wracked extremities.
One really had to want to play or watch Upper Valley high school hockey in those days, and Hartford primed its fans with a 1983-84 league title. The next winter, the Hurricanes reeled off a magical 22-0-0 record, culminating in a championship won at Gutterson Field House, the University of Vermont’s old barn.
It was region-wide news made by boys who never played club hockey, who rode school buses with minimal heating to away games and who played in the uniform style of the time, wearing bumpy helmets and full-length pants, both made by since-forgotten manufacturer Cooper.
Bebeau has nourished that community connection and a couple winters back, stumbled across an endearingly low-tech banner celebrating the 22-0-0 season. It’s hung ever since on the outside of the Hartford coaches’ dressing room, a reminder to all that while the arena has been enclosed, renamed and remodeled, the tradition within continues.
“There are a lot of similarities between that group and this one,” Bebeau said, recalling that the 1984-85 group featured four sets of brothers.
“The way we cared about each other and loved to be in the locker room and to be at the rink, our guys have that now and it brings back a lot of great memories.”
Spaulding said the players’ willingness to give and accept peer criticism has forced each to embrace accountability and is the engine that propels the Hurricanes. The biggest obstacle now may be complacency.
“We try to cloud the view of the playoffs, the semifinals, that state championship,” Spaulding said.
“I think about it occasionally, but I try not to let my mind wonder about it too much.”
Tris Wykes can be reached at twykes@vnews.com.