The Girls Hockey Team with the championship trophy at the 2023 Northwood Invitational Hockey Tournament (Photo: Mr. Michael Aldridge).
The 43rd Annual Northwood Tournament was held February 10-12 at the Lake Placid Olympic Center. The tournament was held over three days and consisted of a Girls’ division, a Varsity division, and a Prep division. Northwood had three teams compete in the tournament, one in each division. Below are the division orientations for the tournament.
Girls Division
Boys Prep Division
Varsity Division
The Varsity team went into the tournament riding high off a 4-1 win the previous weekend. Even better, goaltender Drew Donatello returned from his bout with Mono to attempt to backstop them to glory. This would not be the case. The first game was a 6-5 barnburner, resulting in a Northwood loss. Two 4-1 wins would put the Varsity team back in the running for a championship berth, but they would ultimately lose 1-0 to C.P. Dynamo to cost them their berth in the finals in a game that was decided late after almost 40 minutes of no score. In Varsity’s division, Stanstead College’s U16 team won it all, defeating South Kent in the finals to secure the hardware. Captain Cam Abel said this about his team’s performance: “It was pretty good for us. We came out strong, but we lost our first game by 1, so that was tough, but overall we played some pretty good hockey. We struggled with scoring, but we had a pretty good tournament overall. Obviously not the result we wanted, but it was a good experience to play in front of our friends and family.”
The Girl’s team fared considerably better than Varsity. Sure, it may have been a light schedule, but the Huskies’ girl’s crew probably set some records in terms of what utter domination could look like. It started with an 11-0 rout in a game where they switched to a running clock as a mercy rule. The next two games were smooth sailing, resulting in 3-0 and 7-1 wins against Thetford and Nichols, respectively. Then, in the semifinals, they won 4-2 against Winchendon White, before facing Nichols again in the Finals and winning 4-1. The Girls’ team was the only one of the three Northwood teams to win hardware from this tournament, bouncing back from last year’s shootout loss in the finals to the same Nichols team.
The Prep Team, meanwhile, looked to be on track to winning the title at first. It went a perfect 4-0 through the group stages, with wins against Thetford (4-1), Mount Academy (5-1), the Little Flyers (5-3), and Nichols (4-0). However, another team had an undefeated record; their buddies from down south in South Kent. They also went 4-0, and the finals game was a good look at what happens when an almost unstoppable force meets an immovable object. They were defeated 3-2 in a game that felt nowhere near as close. South Kent’s defense was suffocating, and for a team that relied heavily on dump-and-chase, the Huskies sure got beaten to a lot of pucks.
Overall, though, it was a good tournament for all 3 teams, as they gear up for the home stretches of each of their seasons.
