LIFE OF REILLY: Princeton Day School boys’ hockey player Reilly Gilligan gets ready to spring into action last Wednesday as PDS hosted Lawrenceville. Senior defenseman Gilligan scored the lone goal for the Panthers as they fell 4-1 to the Big Red. The Panthers, who dropped to 5-6-1 with the defeat, host Seton Hall Prep on January 30. (Photo by David Bremer)

By Bill Alden

With Princeton Day School hosting the annual boys’ hockey border war against Lawrenceville last Wednesday evening, McGraw Rink was packed and the tunes from disc jockey Darius Young were pumping as the foes took the ice.

Having suffered a frustrating 6-4 defeat to Delbarton a day earlier, PDS senior defenseman Reilly Gilligan and his teammates were fired up for their clash with the Big Red.

“Obviously this was a huge game, the entire school shows up,” said Gilligan. “Coming off a tough loss yesterday, the energy was there.”

Late in the first period, Gilligan helped raise the energy level a notch, scoring his first career goal to put the Panthers up 1-0.

“We needed a quick goal to get the momentum going,” said Gilligan. “It was just funneling it to the net and it happened to go in. It was a good screen from the boys.”

Taking that lead into the second period on the strength of Gilligan’s tally, things got away from the Panthers as Lawrenceville drew a five-minute major penalty after a scrap in front of its goal followed by a two-minute power play and scored three unanswered goals. That stretch turned the tide of the contest as the Big Red added an empty net goal in the waning moments of the third period to head home with a 4-1 win.

“We can’t pin it in the refs, we have got to have a better kill,” said Gilligan, reflecting on the extended power play. “We have killed bigger penalties before, but we just couldn’t get it done today. Five-on-five we were the better team today. It was three goals in the 5-minute power play that killed us.”

While Gilligan would have preferred getting a win over the Big Red to scoring his first goal, he is happy with his improvement individually in his second year with the PDS program.

“I came in as a junior, I have gotten a lot better,” said Gilligan, who also plays club hockey for the New Jersey Rockets. “Just playing at such a high level, you naturally have to improve yourself.”

PDS head coach Scott Bertoli sensed that his team would come out playing at a high level against Lawrenceville.

“This game, this environment brings that out of both teams,” said Bertoli. “It is pretty cool and unique for high school hockey and our community. It is fun, regardless of the result. My hope in this situation is that it is a competitive game, a clean game and I thought for the most part it was today.”

Bertoli liked the way the Panthers competed from the opening face-off.

“I thought the start was great and the start has been a significant struggle for us,” said Bertoli. “We have been falling behind often, I don’t know why that is. It is something that we really need to figure out. I fully anticipated us being ready to go and being excited given the environment. Reilly played well, that was his first goal for us.”

Like Gilligan, Bertoli pointed to the extended power play in the second period as the pivotal sequence of the game.

“It is just unfortunate, it totally turned the dynamic of the game,” said Bertoli, noting that he was surprised that only PDS was penalized since Lawrenceville players were involved in the fracas. “We just never could recover from that five-minute power play.”

Despite digging that hole, the Panthers kept battling. “You come out of that we had a few chances at the end of the second period there which again,” added Bertoli. “I thought we probably needed to get one of these. We had a little bit of a push early third. We had zone time but we didn’t have a lot of quality chances.”

In reflecting on the defeat, Bertoli acknowledged that the Panthers need to generate more chances throughout games.

“We really need to figure out how we can get ourselves to execute and be more effective and have more jump starting out in games,” said Bertoli. “We have changed warmup routines. It is almost like we are flat coming out and then we figure out, OK, maybe this team isn’t as good as we thought they were. Then we play, then we control games and then we work in the right direction.”

In Bertoli’s view, PDS has the ability to get over that hump. “That is what we just talked about at length with the kids — there is a lot of talent in this locker room,” said Bertoli. “We are fully capable of doing it but it is not going to be easy just given who we are going to play and what the schedule is going to be.”

With postseason play on the horizon, the Panthers have made things harder for themselves.

“One thing has changed with the way we have performed as of late is that we have just made the path to any championship, whether it be the Gordon Conference championship or the state championship, just harder because we are going to be seeded a little bit lower,” said Bertoli. “At the end of the day, you have to beat those teams if we are ultimately going to be a great team, They have got some decisions to make in that locker room and I am confident they will make the right decisions because it is a talented group.”

Gilligan, for his part, believes that PDS will have to show more intensity on and off the ice.

“The thing that makes me angry is the energy on the bench,” said Gilligan. “The third period comes around and we are all exhausted and we are not trying to do anything to get the energy back. We don’t have the fire to get us going. We are going to have to figure it out fast.”