Quinn’s four goal night helps Lincoln-Sudbury best Peabody

SALEM – The seeds might say that the Lincoln-Sudbury hockey team was the No. 7 team in the Division 2 North sectional, but on Friday at Rockett Arena, the Warriors proved they were a lot better than that.Facing No. 2 seed Peabody in what amounted to a road game with the bulk of the crowd rooting for the Tanners, junior forward Connor Quinn had the night of his life, recording all four goals, including a third period hat trick, to send the Warriors to Monday’s North semis against Revere via a 4-1 win.”Connor is that good,” L-S coach Peter Elenbaas said. “A lot of people just don’t know it because he’s unlucky.”The Tanners (17-4-0) got a crash course in how good Quinn was as they simply had no answer for anything that L-S threw at them.”They were just possessed,” Peabody coach Mark Leonard said. “That wasn’t the team that we saw play on Tuesday.”Possessors of the highest scoring offense in the tournament coming in, Peabody got a first hand look at how good senior netminder Liam McInerney of L-S was. McInerney, who came in with a 1.20 GAA, put the clamps on several quality scoring chances the Tanners had.But no two saves were more damaging to Peabody’s hopes then his two on Elijah Cohen breakaway attempts in the second period.”If Eli scores on one of those two, we go up 2-1 and it’s probably a different game,” Leonard said afterwards.Quinn got his spectacular night started just 2:45 in when he did a loop around the offensive zone before snapping a shot past a screened Derek Savage for a 1-0 lead.The Tanners struggled to get anything going in the first but caught a break with 2:02 left when third liner Connor Purcell cut across the slot and caught McInerney moving, beating him glove side.”We felt fortunate after the first to be 1-1,” Leonard said. “We thought that our legs would get going and we’d get a couple. We just couldn’t put one away.”Early in the second, Peabody had its first chance to go in front when Cohen had a breakaway. But McInerney made a blocker save to keep the game tied.The Warriors failed to convert on a pair of power plays midway through the period before McInerney made another spectacular save on a Cohen breakaway, keeping his pad along the ice and stopping the puck inches before it crossed the line, to leave the game tied at 1-1 heading to the third.A Matt Rodgers hooking penalty put the Warriors back on the man advantage at 1:51. It took only eight seconds for L-S to convert as Quinn snapped another screen shot past Savage to make it 2-1.L-S then put its fate in the hands of McInerney and its defense, both of which got the job done. Quinn effectively sealed Peabody’s fate with 5:12 left when he took Jonathan Lewis’ long pass and scored on a breakaway before completing his spectacular effort on another solo dash with 2:46 to go.”That was the best game we’ve played all year,” Elenbaas said. “We knew, as coaches, they had that in them all year and it all came together finally.”