Cranford Edges GL in Overtime to Advance (With VIDEO Highlights)

How's this for an opening act? Kill off a seven-minute power play and then win the game in overtime.

It's not exactly how Cougars head coach Rich Hurley drew it up, but he'll take it, as his fifth-seeded Cougars edged fourth-seeded Governor Livingston 2-1 in the first round of the Union County Cup played at Warinanco Ice Rink in Roselle on Monday.

Billy Davitt's slap shot from the point with 8:22 left in overtime sent the Cougars into celebration mode after a hard-fought effort that kept their hopes alive for the coveted county championship. It was Gary Merwede's win on the faceoff that set up the game-winner.

"It feels good to be able to get the game-winner," said Davitt. "I went out on the ice just hoping for a win. It's great to get a win. It feels even better to contribute to it."

"The kids played great," said Cranford head coach Rich Hurley. "In all my years, I'm not sure I coached an overtime game that went this deep into overtime. It was battle of attrition out there. The kids played really hard, both teams had some really good chances to score and fortunately we were able to get that one."

It looked as if it would be a high scoring affair when Highlanders winger Nick Sousa beat Cranford goalie Mike Williams at the 8:52 mark of the first period.

The Cougars tied the game less then a minute later on a goal by Eric Pawlick off assists by Alex Plick and Sean Feeny. But both teams went scoreless for the next 44 minutes until Davitt ended it in thrilling fashion.

Cranford's defensive effort was stellar when you consider two things. They gave up seven goals in a loss to the Highlanders earlier in the season, and they also had to kill off an almost unheard of seven-minute power play in the second period.

"I told the kids, when we were part way through that power play, if we killed it off it would be almost like scoring a goal," Hurley said. "They could have scored as many goals as they wanted during five minutes of that. To kill that off was huge. The pickup that we got after that was tremendous."

"When they gave us a seven-minute power play, I've never seen that before in my life," said Williams. "I knew I had to keep the puck out of the net and down the stretch, I just had to make the big saves. My defense played great in front of me."

Williams, a senior, had 18 saves to his credit.

"This is the third time we've played these guys all season and we just played terrific as a team," Williams said. "Everybody just gave it their all. We want to go far in counties. After we beat this team, we're running on adrenaline right now."

"You can't say enough about how Mike played in goal tonight," said Hurley. "It was one of the best goaltending performances we've had all season. GL had a number of good chances to score and Mike stones them every time. You can't win the playoffs unless your goalie's hot and Mike was certainly hot tonight."

The Cougars were facing a GL team that had made the Cup final last year and essentially had their entire team back for another run. For the Cougars to knock them off on this stage, after a loss and a tie to their rivals earlier this season, shows just how far this team has come since the beginning of the campaign.

And they showed they'll be ready for every challenge, even if they have to play a little longer.

"Overtime is always scary," Davitt said. "This is the year where it's going to be overtime maybe more than once because all the teams in the league can compete with each other. Today we got lucky, we played hard and hopefully do just as good the rest of the season."

The Cougars (12-9-2) now advance to the Cup semi-final round, where they will face top-seed Summit on Wednesday at 6 p.m. at Warinanco. The two teams traded victories in their two regular season games.

"We beat them the first time we played them 3-1 with an empty-netter, they beat us 3-2 the second time a few weeks ago," Hurley said. "They're a good, solid team. They've been playing real well lately. They came from about fourth-place six weeks ago to win the division. They're a team that's on a roll. It's going to be a very difficult game on Wednesday night."

But if it's anything like their last one, it will be worth the price of admission.

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