4-1 triumph over Grosse Pointe South caps Warriors’ storm through playoffs

Plymouth Township— Work hard, play hard, yes. But just as important is a break, a time-out.

Coach Lou Schmidt Jr. looked much at ease sitting — really, kind of slouching — at the far end of the press conference table after Bloomfield Hills Brother Rice’s 4-1 conquest of Grosse Pointe South for the MHSAA Division 2 hockey championship at Compuware Arena.

“The playoffs were nerve-wracking,” he said of his team, which won six playoff games by scores of 9-1 twice, 4-1 twice, 5-1 and 5-0.

“The kids stayed focused; they never panicked,” he said.

They dealt with whatever tension they might have felt by firing puck after puck — 30 in the first two periods, 38 for the game — at the besieged Grosse Pointe South goalie.

Their aggressiveness paid off. Senior forward Eric Dibble stuffed the puck into the net in a scrum for a 1-0 first-period lead. The Blue Devils knotted the score with 36 seconds remaining in the period on a power play.

The Warriors put the game out of reach in the second period. Junior Russell Cicerone deflected a perfect pass from sophomore Bobby Cross for what proved to be the winning goal. Senior all-state forward Mackenzie MacEachern then flipped the puck off the goalie’s chest for a 3-1 lead.

It was MacEachern’s 42nd goal, along with 48 assists, of the season in 29 games.

Cicerone scored an empty-netter for Rice’s last score with 15 seconds to play.

Sophomore goalie Jack Bowman had to deal with just 17 shots, despite making a couple of brilliant point-blank saves in the third period.

The win gave the Warriors — ranked No. 1 in Division 2 by the state’s Hockey Coaches Association — a 25-4-1 record for the season that began with five wins in the first nine games. Rice caught fire, going unbeaten in the remaining 21 games (20-0-1) of their schedule.

What lit the match, Schmidt said, was “a well-deserved rest” around the holidays. “We had been practicing hard for a while. The rest was very refreshing.”

The win is Brother Rice’s third state championship, the second for Schmidt (2005). The Warriors won the Class A title in 1992 under coach Michael Brown.