TITLE FIGHT: Princeton Day School boys’ hockey senior star forward and captain Connor Fletcher, left, controls the puck against Morristown-Beard last Thursday in the state Prep championship game. Fletcher and the Panthers battled hard but lost 3-0 to the Crimson to fall just short of the crown. PDS, who dropped a 4-1 decision to St. Augustine on Monday to move to 12-7-2, hosts Wyoming Seminary (Pa.) on February 10. (Photo by Frank Wojciechowski)

Connor Fletcher earned a battlefield promotion last winter when he was made the captain of the Princeton Day School boys’ hockey team during his junior campaign when the coaches realized that he was holding the squad together as it struggled to a 3-17-4 record.

Fletcher’s upbeat approach in the face of adversity has paid dividends this season as the senior captain has enjoyed seeing the Panthers resume their winning ways.

“I think the biggest thing is that as players and as team, we are not playing as individuals, we are
playing with each other and for each other,” said Fletcher. “I feel like we have made huge leaps in terms of that.”

Showing huge progress this winter, the second-seeded Panthers went 11-5-2 in advancing to the state Prep championship game where they hosted top-seeded Morristown-Beard last Thursday. PDS battled hard against the high-powered Crimson but fell behind 1-0 in the first period and then surrendered a second goal late in the second period when Mo-Beard went on a five-minute power play. The Panthers generated some good scoring opportunities in the third as they outshot the Crimson 12-9 but ended up falling 3-0 as Mo-Beard tacked on an empty-netter with less than a second left in regulation.

“Going down early against a team like Mo-Beard, it is tough to come back from that,” said Fletcher. “But I give it to the guys, in five-on-five, we really stuck in it. At the end of the day, it was special teams that killed us. They had two power play goals and our power play wasn’t working as well as usual.”

Fletcher tipped his hat to PDS junior goalie Logan Kramsky, who made 40 saves in a losing cause.

“Logan stops the puck for us day in, day out,” said Fletcher. “He was standing on his head. When there is a five minute penalty, one of them is bound to go in and we got a little unlucky with that one. I give it up to Logan, he is keeping us in every single game.”

Coming into the third period, PDS was looking to stick with its game plan.

“We weren’t trying to think win or lose there, it was just trying to go out and play our hardest game against them,” said Fletcher. “I feel like we played well, we just couldn’t find the back of the net.”

While disappointed by the defeat in the title game, Fletcher is proud of how far the Panthers have come this winter.

“We had a really tough season last year and a real young group and the way that they have matured throughout this season and over the offseason has been a real blessing for us,” said Fletcher, who also stars in soccer and lacrosse and is headed to Cornell where he will play for the school’s storied men’s lax program. “We are leaving this game, knowing we have grown this season.”

PDS head coach Scott Bertoli was hoping that Fletcher would go out with a Prep title.

“You would have liked to think we could have found a way to get it done for Connor because he has meant everything to us, to the school, and to the program,” said Bertoli.

“He is a force on whatever field or rink he is on. He is such a good kid, he does everything the right way. All of our young guys look up to him. It is funny because I think the best job he has done was last year as a junior captain for a team with very limited success. The kid went about his business the right way. He had fun coming to the rink every day and I think the kids really benefitted from that. As a coach I appreciate it and as a coach I am smart enough to realize what he meant to that group last year and that has carried over to this year.”

Reflecting on the defeat to Mo-Beard, Bertoli acknowledged that PDS ran into a tough foe.

“It is the little things, blocking shots, playing in front of the net,” said Bertoli.

“They are outstanding at it. They have three big seniors on the back side and they just clear the front of the net like front end loaders. It is unbelievable and it is tough to penetrate. But that being said, we had a ton of chances. We had odd man situations, it was the special teams that did us in tonight.”

Kramsky’s outstanding work in goal kept the Panthers in the game. “He is always good; on that 5-minute power play, they could have pushed it to 3-0 or 4-0 without some of the stops he made and that was key,” said Bertoli, in assessing Kramsky’s sparkling performance.

“It gave us life. We came into the locker room and we felt like we are doing some good things and we had a chance right here at the end of the second. Was it goal, wasn’t it a goal, it depends on who you ask and what angle you looked at. The kid has been awesome all year, the kid has been awesome for three years. He, more than anyone in that locker room besides Fletcher, is the biggest reason why we have won as many games as we have this year.”

For Bertoli, it has been heartening to see his squad’s reversal of fortune this winter.

“I didn’t know what to expect, we lost so many kids; in addition to the graduations, we had three departures and those were pretty key guys,” said Bertoli.

“You return a really young, inexperienced group. They have done a lot of good things and they have surprised me in a lot of ways and they have beat a lot of good hockey teams. We beat six or seven teams that beat us last year and beat us handily and some of them we beat twice and beat them twice handily. It bodes well for the future.”

Fletcher, for his part, is looking to do more good things as he wraps up his last hockey season.

“We are really excited to get back out on the ice and end the season on a high note,” said Fletcher.

“It is a little bittersweet knowing that I am playing in my last Prep championship for hockey but there are no other kids I would rather be out there playing with.”