Burlingame Panthers punch CCS ticket

Taking on an undefeated Ocean Division champ in Aragon, Burlingame had its hands full. Three losses in a row, including one on paper in the form of the tiebreaker, seemed to be wearing on the Panthers as a fired-up Dons squad held Burlingame scoreless in the opening period.

But the Panthers were given an unpleasant jolt late in the second period that woke them from their doldrums as the powered away for a 10-4 victory to earn the PAL’s final automatic berth into the CCS postseason, their first CCS appearance in eight years.

“We started real, real slow,” said Burlingame first-year head coach Rory Hocker, who was with the Menlo-Atherton program last year and is a coach with the Stanford water polo club.

“Mentally, we were a little down. We had a couple of tough results earlier in the week.”

Burlingame (14-9) seemed to take a 1-0 lead less than a minute into the game, but Adrian Gong’s flip over the Aragon goalie was waved off because the shot clock had expired. The Panthers managed seven shots in the opening period, but only three were on goal, with one banging off the crossbar. They even had a power-play shot saved.

Like the Panthers, Aragon (12-4) was getting shots off, but only half were on target as the teams finished the opening period scoreless.

“Early on, we were in our own way,” Hocker said.

The Panthers finally opened the scoring on power play in the opening minute of the second period, with Gong backhanding a shot into the net from the 2-meter spot, but they could not do anything with the momentum as the Dons was keeping the Panthers in check.

And then the game turned. It could have been a boost for the Aragon, as the Dons watched Burlingame starting hole set get red carded and ejected for apparently saying the wrong thing, at the wrong time, with the wrong person listening.

The red card gave Aragon a 5-meter penalty shot, which Kieran Moorhead converted, to tie the score at 1-all with 3:44 to play in the first half.

But instead of gassing up the Dons, it was the Panthers who got fired up.

Especially Gong. Twenty-nine seconds after Aragon tied the score, Gong gave Burlingame the lead for good. He received a pass on the left wing and fired a long-distance, side-arm strike to the far right corner for a 2-1 Panthers’ lead with 3:15 left in the second quarter.

Goalie Will Wuebbling triggered the Panthers’ next goal, as he hit Nick Williams on a long outlet pass down the right wing, who then found Micah Chew driving the lane, who made the score 3-1 with 2:40 left.

Gong then scored back-to-back goals to put Burlingame up 5-1 at halftime. His second of the period came from the point, again slinging side arm around the defender and drilling the back of the net. With 43 seconds left in the half, Gong drew and then converted a 5-meter penalty shot for the second-period hat trick.

Hocker said the ejection was a blessing in disguise because he said sometimes his team just reverts to dumping the ball into the set.

“It forced our other players to step up,” Hocker said.

In the second half, the Panthers’ experience of playing in the Bay Division started to pay off as they started beating Aragon to both ends of the pool.

The Dons opened the scoring in the second half, when Moorhead guided home a shot from the point as he was leaning backward and then got a stop on the other to give the Dons some hope.

But Burlingame’s Wuebbling picked up the hockey assist on the Panthers’ first goal of the third period, another long outlet pass to Gong on the right wing. It set up a 2-on-1 and Gong fed a wide open Matt Derossett in the middle, who had an empty net in front of him for a 6-2 advantage. An Oliver Conniffe steal got the the Panthers out on the fast break, with Nick Williams feeding Derossett for a 7-2 lead.

Moorhead got his third goal of the game for the Dons, but the Panthers answered back with Derossett drawing a penalty shot on a fast break and Gong converting it for his game-high fifth goal.

“I swam these guys a lot in August and early September, to show them that the counter attack is the easiest ways to get goals,” Hocker said. “They’ve really embraced pushing the pace.”

Derossett notched his second-half hat trick with a power-play goal off an assist from Alex Bozinovic and Williams rounded out the scoring off assists from Wuebbling, who finished with 13 saves and three assists, and Gong, while Anthony Stewart scored Aragon’s final goal with 35 seconds left.