ANDOVER — Sophomore Peyton Kennedy had a three-point effort, posting a pair of assists to go along with the winning goal seconds after Austin Prep tied the game in the third period, to power the Big Blue to a 5-1 NEPSAC win at Harrison Rink.
“At the faceoff, we were all talking about it. We were planning like, ‘We need to score right now, it’s going to happen,’ because we like to respond,” Kennedy said. “I got the pass and I was like, ‘Well, this is it, might as well score now.’”
After going up 1-0 on a Keira Bruen goal with 23.5 seconds left in the first, the Cougars (14-4-3), playing their inaugural season in NEPSAC after going 27-0 to win the MIAA Division 1 title last season, held firm in their own zone despite an onslaught of shots from the Big Blue (19-1-0).
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But after Kennedy’s goal with 12 minutes to play, the floodgates opened — the Big Blue scored three goals in a 2:44 stretch late in the third, with Kennedy assisting two of the scores.
“I just told them to be patient,” Phillips Andover head coach Martha Fenton said. “They know they can score, and we’ve done a really good job of putting points up,” Phillips Andover head coach Martha Fenton said. “I just told them to be patient with each other and keep getting traffic to the net because that’s how we get looks like that.
The Big Blue had five different goal scorers in the win.