Carson Lopez did what he does best when his team needed him.
The goaltender for the Council Rock South ice hockey team was a rock star between the pipes on Thursday night, helping the Golden Hawks to a 4-2 win over Pennsbury in the Suburban High School Hockey League National Division’s title game at Grundy Arena.
At game’s end, Lopez, who made 20 saves for the evening, was handed the trophy as the Most Valuable Player, but didn’t realize it.
“I didn’t know what it was,” he admitted. “They just gave it to me and I took it.”
Lopez earned the hardware. He held Pennsbury’s Brendan Macainsh, the league’s leading scorer, to just two goals.
“Those guys like to stretch out the ice a lot,” he said. “About halfway through the game, we told our defense to stop with the pinching; start backing off, playing the neutral zone and it worked.
“We were talking the whole night before and the whole day today that we just need to close our gaps on him. Make him beat us with his speed. He got lucky on the first one and the second was just a real nice play.”
His teammates appreciate having Lopez behind them.
“You can’t really describe how crucial he is to this team,” CR South defender Kevin Koles said. “He’s the best goalie in the league. There isn’t anyone better.”
The Golden Hawks went up 2-0 in the first period on back-to-back goals by Chase Tovsky, assisted by Blaize Pepe on the first one and Kevin Koles and Pepe on the second.
Jonah Weston made it 3-0 with assists from Bobby Gilbert and James DiIulio before the Falcons finally got on the board.
The second period ended with CR South holding a 3-1 advantage.
“You win championships when your third line that doesn’t score a lot scores, and they scored tonight,” CR South coach Joe Houk said.
Weston, Gilbert and Ilya Mukhin are the third line for the Golden Hawks.
Macainsh netted his second tally of the night for the Falcons to open the third period, before Pepe registered an unassisted goal to round out the evening.
CR South reached the title game via an 8-2 win over Neshaminy in the semifinals, while Pennsbury topped Pennridge, 8-5, with a four-goal performance from Macainsh.
“We heard about what happened yesterday when they beat Pennridge, so we knew what we had to do coming into the game,” said Koles, a team captain. “And that’s what we did.
“Limiting them to 20 (actually 22) shots is very crucial. We knew we had to stop one of their best players.
“We obviously played them a lot and we locked him down. He only had two goals on us, and we came out on top.”
This is the third league title for the top-seeded Golden Hawks (17-1-0-1), who also won in 2010 and 2020. Pennsbury falls to 14-6, with three of the Falcons’ losses coming at the hands of CR South.
“Defense controlled the whole flow of the game,” Houk said. “I thought we wore them out a little bit.We wanted to make sure pucks went deep. Carson was stellar again.”
“We struggled a little bit last night (in the semifinal win over Neshaminy). I thought we were a little nervous – we hadn’t played in a week-and-a-half, but we put together a good performance tonight – right from the goal line out.”
CR South held a 35-22 edge in shots on goal.
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