The win was there for the taking for Lake Forest against visiting Loyola Gold on Wednesday, with a 2-on-1 rush and a solo breakaway in overtime of a 3-3 tie.

But Loyola goaltender Charlie Trapp said ‘not tonight’.

The freshman Trapp stoned both prime Lake Forest scoring chances in overtime, showing a poise beyond his years.

“You’d never know he’s a freshman,” Loyola’s Will Steele said. “He’s not rattled at all.”

Trapp’s two game-saving stops gave Loyola the time it needed to locate a game-winning goal. With 1:57 remaining in overtime, a puck tipped by a Lake Forest defenseman on the doorstep gave Loyola’s William Finegan his chance, and Finegan capitalized to give Loyola the 4-3 win. The puck was spinning on its edge on the goal line before crossing to end the game. 

Finegan’s game-winner put an end to a wildly entertaining if occasionally sloppy hockey game.

Afterwards, Loyola’s Jake Peraino stood outside the visiting locker room wearing a yellow hard-hat on his head, an award given in the Gold locker room after each game.

“We give the hard-hat for hard work, effort, and competing and (Peraino) was just buzzing all night,” Loyola coach Scott Ciraulo said.

Coaches are always preaching three periods of hard work, especially during the early part of the season. Wednesday’s game saw momentum shifts based on swings of intensity both ways.

Loyola (6-2 overall, 1-0 in SHL play) came out in attack mode, putting Lake Forest (5-4, 1-3) on its back foot. Peraino got Loyola on the board in the 6th minute and for the game’s first 10 minutes, Loyola held a 7-2 edge in shots and had the lion’s share of pressure.

Gold had it rolling at the outset.

“I thought we started out firing and could have had a couple (goals) if we had continued to play the way we did in the first half of the first period,” Peraino said. “I feel like we could have blown that game away. But then across the board, I thought we might have gotten a little greedy and got too cute with the puck.”

After Peraino’s goal, Lake Forest found its energy and fought back. The Scouts have no shortage of skill and speed, and started applying those traits and playing more physical hockey mid-way through the first period. 

The change paid off with :51 seconds left in the period, when Andrew Marsch scored the first of his two goals on the night.

Lake Forest came back to tie the game twice, and coach Steve Sarauer just wants his boys to stop getting burned at the beginning of games.

“The same thing happened against Stevenson,” Sarauer said. “We won the game 6-2 but we spotted them two goals. To say we’re coming out slow in games is an understatement and you just can’t keep doing that and expect to win in this league.

“But a point is hard as hell to get in this league. Especially for a team like us, getting a point from a game like this is big. These kids are going to step up and it’s a good team. They just need to keep proving themselves the way they did tonight.”

Loyola regained some momentum to start the second period. Peraino, Tyler Lawriw, and Peter Lochnicki all fired on Lake Forest goalie Andrew Sommers through the period’s first six minutes.

With 10:41 remaining in the second, Lochnicki skated up from the neutral zone, went around a defenseman to his left, and finished on a backhand shot to give Loyola a 2-1 lead.

From there, Loyola’s Cooper Nelson fired wide from the point and Lake Forest’s Zach Shoemaker swept in up the right side and forced a Trapp save, setting up a draw on the right side circle.

The puck found Marsch, who touched it across the slot and buried his second backhand and his second goal of the game. But Marsch’s two scores weren’t what pleased his coach the most.

“It’s great that (Marsch) had two goals but you watch that kid off the puck and he’s an absolute workhorse,”Sarauer said. “He has a drive inside him and he’s an absolute menace out there. He never gives up. If every player I have with less skill played as hard as that kid, we’d be winning more games.”

Loyola held a 19-11 edge in shots after two periods of a 2-2 tie.

“I thought we came out really well, established our forecheck, and then we started making little mistakes,” Ciraulo said. “That team is really fast in transition and we gave them confidence, and then it became a dogfight. It was a really tough game. But we over-complicated things. We had to simplify and it would have been a better game for us.”

In the third period it was Loyola’s turn to come back from a one-goal deficit. After scoring a hat-trick in Lake Forest’s 5-3 loss to Saint Ignatius on Sunday, the Scouts’ Jackson Drum scored his fourth SHL goal of the year with 10:30 remaining in the third period, on Demetri Fallidas’ 5th assist in four SHL games.

Fallidas fired from deep on the right side and the puck deflected to the far post, where Drum’s backhand gave Lake Forest its first lead of the game at 3-2.

That lead didn’t last long. Roughly one minute later, Loyola’s Mack Klein fired from the point on the left side, and Charlie Baine’s redirection stretched the back netting near the far post, with 9:36 remaining in the game.

Wild momentum shifts ensued from there.

“It’s the first (SHL) game of the season and we’re trying to figure out where we stand,” Peraino said. “There were momentum shifts but we were able to re-coup and get some momentum back.”

Both goalies turned away quality shots down the stretch, with Trapp gloving a Drum shot from the high slot and Baine carrying the puck up the right side and walking in on Sommers, who turned him away.

“(Sommers) was fantastic,” Sarauer said. “I’ve gone back and forth between Teddy (Huddlestun) and him and there’s no reason he can’t be in net for big games. Andrew has developed some confidence, which is showing now. He’s kind of been in the shadow for the last two years but he’s playing with such confidence this year. He’s focused and dialed in.”

After Trapp turned away overtime shots from Drum and Murphy Moorhead, his side was equally pleased with its goaltending on Wednesday.

Loyola planned to have junior Declan Smith between the pipes this season but a season-ending injury have Ciraulo and his staff calling on the freshman Trapp to take over.

“He had to make a huge step up since Smitty got hurt, and that was a huge performance by him tonight,” Peraino said of Trapp. “He’s pretty mature and come game-time, he comes prepared to get it done. He’s a confident kid.”

The game-winning goal began with a potential Loyola hand-pass in front of the Lake Forest goal. A defenseman touched it, however, leaving a live puck for the taking, and Finegan was there to take it and end the game.

Loyola finished with a 32-26 edge in shots, and also got a rock-solid performance from Steele.

“Will Steele was awesome tonight,” Ciraulo said. “He’s a senior defenseman and an assistant captain. We’re missing our captain, Chris Sipe, tonight and we needed the D to step up. Steele really had a good game.

“We haven’t played our best game yet this year and we’ve got guys missing. Some of our best players are out right now so we have guys stepping up, but I think we’ll just have to fight for wins right now until we get healthy and we get re-loaded.”

Steele was happy to see his side get the overtime win on visiting ice.

“It was a gritty game,” Steele said. “It wasn’t our best performance, a little sloppy, but it’s the first regular-season game of the year. Our effort was definitely there early.”

In its second year in the SHL, Lake Forest clearly took a stride forward this season. The Scouts’ coach wants to see those strides continue.

“They still need to believe in themselves and this was a good step in that direction,” Sarauer said. “They still need that urgency and they need to understand how important every goal is.

“We want the playoffs. And I don’t care how we get there. I mean, if we took every team to overtime like we did tonight, we’d have enough points to make the playoffs. So we’ll just keep pushing and hopefully things will work out.”