Spaulding secures D-II girls hockey championship to cap Vermont's first perfect season.

The bench emptied. Cheers bounced off the old, arched roof above. Gloves and sticks shot skyward, the haphazard confetti that follows every triumphant end to a hockey season.

Except this time, Spaulding's time, broke new ground. And the traditional handshakes at center ice finished the job.

Perfection, punctuated.

With a three-goal blitz in the second period and a two-goal night from freshman sensation Cami Bell, the top-seeded Crimson Tide etched their place in the history books with a 4-0 win against No. 3 Champlain Valley/Mount Mansfield in the Division II high school girls hockey championship game at Gutterson Fieldhouse on Monday night.

Vermont had seen its share of teams finish a winter on the ice with just one defeat. But Spaulding (22-0) is the first to make it from December to March with a zero in the loss column.

"We knew we'd have a pretty good team but ... we had three overtime games, we had a bunch of other games where we're within a goal or two in the last five minutes," Spaulding coach Dave Lawrence said. "I didn't think it would be possible."

The crown is the first for the program since a D-II title in 2002, the first year the Vermont Principals' Association sanctioned the sport. It's the school's first team championship since the boys hockey team won in 2010.

"We just came into it passionate and our team chemistry was awesome," Bell said. "We just went full throttle the whole time. It was just great." 

The numbers back up the greatness, too. Bell finished the year an even 80 points — 56 goals and 24 assists — for one of the gaudiest seasons the state has seen. And Spaulding lit up opponents for 5.5 goals per game, overpowering foes 16-6 in three postseason games and never losing sight of the present in their pursuit of perfection.

"It's pretty wild — and, honestly, we didn't even talk about it as the season went along," Lawrence said. "It was one game at a time, one period at a time. We never brought it up throughout the year and the kids were good about blocking it out."

Yet it took survival in the first period — CVU/MMU outshot Spaulding 11-8 and CougarHawks defender Alicia Veronneau's shadowing of Bell kept the rookie in check — before the Tide could get rolling.

After an invigorating semifinal win over North Country/Lyndon, the CougarHawks were amped up for the chance to spoil Spaulding's spectacular year.

"We wanted to carry that energy into this game," CVU/MMU coach Scott Bushweller said. "It was just getting players to move their feet, go after the puck as fast as possible."

Karina Bushweller had the game's first good chance at 5 minutes, 40 seconds of the first period but Spaulding's Mattie Cetin (24 saves) got a piece of it with her shoulder to preserve the deadlock. Two shifts later, Tess Everett forced a turnover in the Tide's zone and fired off Cetin's pad from below the right circle.

Later in the frame, the CougarHawks (12-11) killed off overlapping penalties and nearly a minute of 5-on-3 time. 

"We had a hard first period," Lawrence said. "They played a great game and they really came out hard at us."

"We had to make it kind of ugly and simple to fix what we were going through there for a while," Lawrence said. 

The stripped-down approach, trying to get shots to the net and traffic in front rather than rely on flash, paid off almost immediately.

Bria Dill collected a pass form Molly Parker and sent a shot from the right side off Grace Ferguson's pads that Rebecca McKelvey, on the edge of the crease, shoved across the line at 1:33.  Less than a minute and a half later, Dill got one of her own with a screened shot from the left point, set up by Zoe Tewksbury and Bell.

Then Bell broke through with 4:45 to go in the period. McKelvey scooped up a loose puck in the left circle and whipped a shot toward Ferguson (18 saves). It slipped past the freshman netminder and Bell tapped it in at the far post.

CVU/MMU scrapped its man-marking strategy for the third period in an effort to create more in the offensive zone. Chances came — a Kiley McClure shot drew iron in the first minute; Everett forced a tough save after a long rush — but Bell exacted her toll again before the night was done.

With 3:30 to play, the Spaulding rookie swooped between the circles with the puck, drifted into the left slot and sniped her final goal of the year for a 4-0 cushion.

One more keepsake for a storybook season.

"It's amazing. I've had so much fun on this team. I love it every time I get on the ice with them and I can't thank them enough," Bell said. "I've had such a blast all the time, I just love it so much."