John Jay’s Overtime Goal Ends the Bobcats’ Season
puck up the ice vs. John Jay.
Grace Lunder sat slumped on a wooden bench just outside the Byram Hills locker room late Friday night, frozen like a statue, with her head buried near her knees.
Just minutes earlier, the Bobcats’ standout goalie had dropped face first onto the ice in the anguished realization that an angled shot from John Jay’s Michael Fischetti had somehow eluded her and wound up in the net for a game-winning overtime goal, lifting the third-seeded Indians to a nail-biting 1-0 victory over second-seeded Byram Hills in the Section 1, Division II hockey semifinals.
Fischetti’s dramatic goal with 2:33 left in the second overtime came nearly three hours after the two teams had first stepped onto the rink at the Brewster Ice Arena, sent the Indians’ large legion of fans into a frenzy and brought a crushing end to the 2016-17 Bobcats’ season that provided fans with achievements never reached before in Byram Hills history.
“Obviously it’s not a great feeling to not be moving on to Sunday,” said Byram Hills head coach A.J. Cloherty, shortly after the Bobcats’ quest to reach the sectional final against powerhouse Pelham fell just short. “But when that puck went in, I wasn’t even upset. I mean, you want to win, but in a game like that – it’s gonna go down as one of the best I’ve ever been a part of on this team, maybe one of the best in the section – someone’s gotta win it, and it’s not gonna be a pretty goal.”
Pretty or not, the shot by Fischetti had the same devastating impact on a Byram Hills team that went 15-5 during the regular season to win the school’s first league title, then defeated the Mt. Pleasant Ice Cats 4-1 in the quarterfinals last Wednesday evening for the first-ever Bobcat playoff victory. A senior defenseman who had scored just one goal all season, Fischetti reached the puck just as it caromed off the side board left of the goal and he wasted no time sending a shot in the direction of Lunder.
“Hey, we were talking about it the whole time, just get pucks on the net in overtime,” said John Jay coach Alex Smith, whose team wound up outshooting the suddenly tiring Bobcats by a 12-3 margin in overtime. “It’s gonna be a dirty goal. And, you know, he had it on the side boards, a little traffic, you never know.”
Until the goal by Fischetti late in the second seven-and-a-half-minute overtime session, Lunder had kept the Indians off the scoreboard for more than two full games. The Bobcats defeated John Jay 2-0 earlier this season, and then she turned aside 30 shots by the Indians before the fateful one from Fischetti left her inconsolable.
“Grace is a phenomenal goalie,” said Cloherty. “I think she’s an elite talent and every year she just gets better. And she’s really hard on herself. So the fact she was reacting the way she did should tell you how high a standard she holds herself to.”
For a moment late in the first overtime, it seemed the Bobcats would be the team doing the post-game celebrating. Senior defenseman Robert Lunder, making the final dazzling rush of his stellar five-year Bobcat career, somehow managed to skate past a pair of Indian defenders along the left boards, then backhanded a perfect pass to an open Ethan Behar right of the crease. But John Jay goalie George McMichael reacted just in time to deflect Behar’s would-be winner wide of the net.
“We were excited,” said Cloherty. “We thought we had one, but it went just a little wide. Ethan just got tripped up a little bit and put the puck just wide on the goalie.”
Behar’s near-miss turned out to be the Bobcats’ last hurrah in a game that up until then had been remarkably even. The two teams each put six shots on goal in the first two periods and then seven in the third. But in the second overtime session, Byram Hills never really touched the puck and was outshot 5-0.
“Yeah, I thought they were worn out,” said the Indians’ Smith about the Bobcats. “You’ve got to tip your hat to them. Those kids played their hearts out. It was a tough game for anyone to lose.”
If anyone should have been worn out, it was Robert Lunder, the Bobcats’ goal-scoring whiz who had provided two of them in the playoff win over Mt. Pleasant 48 hours earlier. The only time he was off the ice against the Indians was between periods.
“He literally played the whole game,” said Smith. “The guy’s an amazing athlete. You know what, we just talked about getting a piece of him. Anytime he has the puck, get a piece of him, and I thought we did a pretty good job on him.”
“He wanted to be out there the whole time,” said Cloherty. “We weren’t gonna tell him he can’t, unless he really needed it (some rest).”
According to Cloherty, there really aren’t words to describe the impact Lunder had on the Bobcat hockey program.
“Both Lunders have done so much,” he said. “But Robert, in particular, set all the scoring records. He was one of our leaders in scoring in eighth grade, ninth grade, all the way through 12th grade. He’s irreplaceable.”
With a double-digit winning streak during the regular season, capped by the school’s first league title and playoff win, Cloherty has a lot to savor when he looks back on what the Bobcats accomplished this season.
“We’re proud of ‘em,” he said. “You can’t be more proud of a team. Our seniors brought us from nothing, from 1 and 19 all the way up to 16 and 6 now. Sectional semifinals, a goal away from seeing Pelham, a team like that. Just another step in the right direction for us, and we’re gonna keep building on that.”
Andy is a sports editor at Examiner Media, covering seven high schools in the mid-Westchester region with a notebook and camera. He began there in the fall of 2007 following 15 years as a candid photographer for the largest school picture company in the tri-state area.
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