Franklin 4, Westwood 0:
Century mark for Porter
CANTON — With 44 seconds left in the opening period of yesterday's Franklin girls hockey game at the Metropolis Rink, a shy 10-year-old girl wearing a pink hooded fleece and matching gloves pulled a poster board from a garbage bag and raised it above her head.
The powder blue poster read: 100/SNIPE/PORTER.
"We had to keep it hidden just in case," said Roberta Porter after watching her older daughter, Rachel, score her 100th career goal for the Panthers, thereby allowing younger daughter Shannon to break out the sign.
"It's a relief," Roberta added. "Now we can go the rest of the season knowing she's made the goal."
Rachel Porter reached the milestone early in the 4-0 victory against Westwood after taking a pass from senior Melissa Coughlin while standing directly between the circles in front of the goal.
The senior captain made two lateral moves before flipping the puck past Wolverines goalie Janice Michaud into the top right corner.
And even though she was swarmed by her teammates, Porter managed to see her sister's sign.
"I came home yesterday and there was a poster but it didn't have anything on it, I didn't know what it was for," said Porter, who had a hat trick yesterday in becoming the first Panther ever to reach 100 goals. "She whipped it out of nowhere. (The support) is pretty insane. We don't have as much support as the guys' team and it really means a lot. They were loud, I heard them."
In the second period, Porter and Coughlin traded places as Porter provided the assist on Coughlin's goal at the 12:31 mark.
Porter, who came into the season with 76 goals, scored twice against Boston Latin on Sunday to bring her total to 99. She has at least one point in every game this winter except one - the Panthers' 1-0 loss in their previous meeting against Westwood.
"That was the beginning of the season, we've struggled all year," Westwood coach Andrea Boudreau said. "The puck went in the net for her tonight and it didn't the last time we played. I think Rachel's a great player. She plays well all the time. I'm sure she had extra motivation to go out and get her 100th goal and once she got it, it gave her more confidence to keep going."
Porter scored at the 10:32 mark of the final period before striking again 28 seconds later, with both goals coming off Coughlin assists. All those points brought Rachel's total to 26 goals and 10 assists on the season, despite the fact that she joked with her coach - Margie Burke - that she was waiting to score her 100th goal on home ice.
"We weren't going to put up with that," said Burke, whose team improved to 7-5-1 (6-5-1 SEMGHL). "We needed the two points too bad to get into the tournament. We still need four more points and we have six games left."
The other star of the night was Franklin sophomore goalie Kailyn Burke, who earned her first shutout of the season with a 23-save effort.
While Burke said it's not unusual for a player of Porter's caliber to average 25 goals a year, the coach said Porter didn't come close to that mark her freshman year and has more than made up for it since then. "She has (come a long way)," Roberta Porter said. "She started playing when she was five, that's a lot of early mornings at the rink."
Porter's mom was also happy her older daughter got her 100th goal so Shannon didn't have to smuggle the poster marking the occasion out of the rink.
"Fortunately we didn't have to do that," Roberta said.
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