Elite 9 Hockey League
U14 Advantage Fighting Crabs Win NGHL Granato Cup!

The U14 Boston Advantage Fighting Crabs traveled to St. Louis to play in the NGHL Playoffs this past weekend. The girls got off to a slow start and lost to the St. Louis Jr Blues 5-3 in their opening game. BA dug deep in game 2 against Ironbound and came back from a 3-1 deficit with 5 minutes left. After scoring 2 late goals to tie the game, they went into a shootout. Goalie Emily Lavalee shut the door on both shooters she faced, while Georgia Carragher and Wren Abboud buried their chances and helped the team capture the victory. The BA Fighting Crabs built on this momentum and won their next games over Chicago Fury (3-1) and then the KC Storm (4-1) to advance to the championship game against the same strong Tier 1 St. Louis Blues team that got the best of them in their preliminary round game.

It was a see-saw battle, started off by BA’s Ali Melvin, who opened the scoring 8 seconds into the game. After the Blues tied it, Georgia Carragher put BA up 2-1. The Blues once again tied the game up. Goals by Wren Abboud and Pippa Jiranek had BA up 4-2 before seeing the Blues scored two late goals to tie the game four aside. The game looked to be going into OT until, with 10 seconds to go in the game, Wren Abboud received a pass from Reese Pompeo for a breakaway. With the game on her stick, Wren fended off a defender and lifted a shot over the goalie’s blocker to win the game with only a few seconds left on the clock!