There was no way that the first state hockey final between rivals Hendricken and La Salle wasn’t going to come down to the wire, right?

But for most of game two on Saturday night, it didn’t look that way.

After dropping game one on Friday night, 3-1, Hendricken was staring down a do-or-die scenario in game two.

And, despite not leading at any point over the first 85 minutes of the series, Pat Creamer scored on a backhand shot with 5:05 left on Saturday night to tie the game, 1-1, to force overtime.

That set up a highlight reel game-winner from Ryan King at 4:29, spinning out of the corner and into the slot and firing a shot over the glove of Rams’ goaltender Tyler Walsh. The goal propelled the Hawks to a 2-1 win and into a game three, which was set for 6:30 p.m. on Monday night at Brown – check Thursday’s Beacon for coverage of the third and final game.

However, it wasn’t looking good for the Hawks in the first two periods.

La Salle jumped out to a 1-0 lead just over two minutes into the second period, when the Rams broke through the neutral zone on a 3-on-2 break. Logan Liljeberg slipped a pass to Matt Manown, who kept the puck and snuck a shot through the five-hole of Matt Kenneally.

But Hendricken remained composed, as it out-shot La Salle, 22-14, over the first two frames. Although they didn’t have anything to show for their effort, head coach Jim Creamer was happy with the way that his team was playing.  

“I thought we played a good game,” Creamer said. “Even though we were down 1-0, I thought that we were playing well. That’s the way it’s been with them all year. I came away from (game one) thinking we played pretty well.”

Hendricken came out and played its best period of the series in the third period. It had no choice, it was either find a way to get the puck past Walsh, or go home.

In a period where the Rams were out-shot 11-1, Hendricken’s urgency was bound to pay off, and it did.

At 9:55 of the third, Reilly Miller won a faceoff to the left of Walsh and, after collecting the puck, Pat Creamer was able to power his way towards the net and beat Walsh with a backhand far-side.

King was then able to send the series to a third game with a tremendous individual effort, scoring the unassisted goal with 3:01 remaining in the sudden-death overtime.

“In game one, we didn’t get a bounce and they capitalized,” Jim Creamer said. “But tonight we came through and two sophomores finished. I think Patrick put one off of both posts earlier, so you could sense that he was maybe feeling it a little bit. He gets his and then Ryan just does a tremendous job on a great individual play in overtime. It was really just an unbelievable play.”

Before King ended it, though, Kenneally came up big for Hendricken.

With no room for error, Kenneally turned aside five La Salle shots in the first three minutes of the overtime period – stopping 19 of the Rams’ 20 shots in the win, as well.

“Kenneally was great,” Jim Creamer said. “It’s something that we work on. We know the overtime format, so we’ve been working on it for weeks. So, in a sense, there was a comfort level there.”

The Rams, who are looking to end a 37-year championship drought, jumped out to an early lead in game one on Friday night.

Joe Manown, the state’s leading goal-scorer, found the back of the net just 26 seconds into the game, ripping a shot past Kenneally to the blocker-side.

King would tie the game, 1-1, midway through the first period, beating Walsh and depositing the puck into an open cage on the backhand.

But La Salle had an answer.

Joe Manown used a Hendricken defenseman as a screen in the opening minutes of the third period and it seemed as if the shot may have changed direction. Kenneally never got a good look at the shot that gave the Rams a 2-1 lead.

Hendricken couldn’t find the equalizer, despite producing some good chances in the third period.

Andrew Hopgood rang the iron clean to the glove-side of Walsh on a third-period power play, but that is as close as the Hawks came, with La Salle sophomore Evan McGreen adding an empty-net goal with 14.9 seconds remaining.

And, for a while in game two, things looked to be going the same way. The Rams really packed it in defensively in the third period in an attempt to escape with the one-goal win, but to no avail.

For a team that was 5:05 away from making school history, it had to be devastating, while Hendricken was able to fight back to force, what was, a one-game series going into game three.

Everything, even the first two games, didn’t matter heading into Monday night’s game.

“It’s been great,” Jim Creamer said. “There’s been a great environment. We evened it up and we’ll see what happens Monday.”