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North Andover continues surge, ties Andover

Monday, February, 21 By Chuck Frye
Staff writer

NORTH ANDOVER — It was the only rebound Joey Daccord couldn't control yesterday, and for good reason.

Trailing 3-2 with seconds remaining and goalie Kyle Berthiaume pulled for an extra attacker, Andover defenseman Chris Kucharski drove a rising slap shot from the right point. The laser drilled North Andover netminder Daccord in his facemask right between the eyes and bounced to the side of the net. Scotty Campbell collected the rare loose puck and tucked it past the startled goalie with 9.4 seconds remaining for a 3-3 face-saving deadlock, pulling the Division 1 Warriors even with a Division 2 Scarlet Knights squad that's been on a nice roll lately.

A lot of North Andover's six-game winning streak has had to do with the play of Daccord, a freshman who played with the savvy of senior.

Especially in a pressure-cooker of a second period where the puck stayed in the Knights' zone throughout, Daccord kept things manageable at a 2-1 deficit. Facing 15 shots, the freshman stoned David Belluche, Matt Swett and Liam Centrella as his teammates survived a flat middle 15 minutes.

"I don't know if we were in a funk," said Knights head coach Peter Marfione. "Our passes were a little off and we lost focus in the second period. Plus (Andover) got a nice power play goal (from Jim Burns) at the end of the period."

"Coach kind of called us out after the second period," Daccord said. "It was our biggest crowd so far — Youth Hockey Day — everyone wanted to show them that a Division 2 team could beat a Division 1 team. That's huge."

Bottling up the Warriors (8-8-3) through extended forechecking, North Andover (10-5-3) caught a break when Michael Cusack's shot rebounded high, bounced off Richard O'Connor and into the net with 9:38 left to tie the game.

After being denied on a couple of strong scoring opportunities, sophomore Derek Hunter finally broke through. Hunter gathered in the rebound of classmate Nick Pino's right point drive on the left side and nudged it past Berthiaume with 1:32 left to send the North Andover faithful into a frenzy.

"We were pumped for this game all year," Hunter said. "I saw the puck go down, I got a good look at the net and my adrenaline took over."

But Andover had the final answer, pulling Berthiaume with 1:18 remaining and leaning on Kucharski for offense. His first drive from the left side was stopped by Daccord and his second was deflected in front of the net. The third shot, however, was one Daccord couldn't handle cleanly for obvious reasons.

"I saw it coming at me and I thought about moving," Daccord said, "but I said, 'Nah',"

"My role is to work on defense and score goals," Campbell said. "All of us were working hard, Chris had a nice shot and the rebound came to me. We needed to come out with a point and this was big."

Andover needs one more point out of its final two games (Reading tomorrow and Boston Latin Friday) to qualify for postseason play.