AUBURN — Reed Hopkins kept trying and trying and trying, and finally the puck went in.

It was a microcosm of how the game went for Cony/Hall-Dale/Monmouth, but all that mattered in the end was that it was a success.

Hopkins scored on a rebound with 1:43 left in overtime to rally the Rams past Edward Little, 2-1, in a Class A North boys’ hockey game at Norway Savings Bank Arena on Wednesday.

“Riley Dowe shot it, and just rebound popped out, and just trying to put it in a couple times, and finally got it,” Hopkins said.

Hopkins was planted near the left post, and when Dowe’s initial shot was stopped by EL goalie Ben Feldman, Hopkins was there to keep trying to poke it past the sprawled out right leg of Feldman.

“(Reed) was in the right spot at the right time, and he kept working hard to get it in,” Rams (9-4) coach Chad Foye said. “He was where he had to be, and he kept battling.”

The Rams as a whole had to keep battling in the final minutes of regulation, staring at a 1-0 deficit in a game that saw them have numerous quality chances. But Feldman kept getting in the way of every one.

Cam Wilson, who was denied countless times by Feldman throughout the game, pushed a rebound past Feldman with 2:07 left in the third period to tie the game. Noah King had the assist.

“We talked about that a lot, going to the net hard,” Foye said. “(Feldman) made a lot of good saves, and we just weren’t working, finishing plays off enough. When you got a goalie like that, usually that’s the type of goals you get, those hard-work, battle, scrap-in-front, and just kind of get tough, get goals like that.”

Red Eddies (4-9) coach Brett Barrett could only lament a mistake that gave the Rams one too many chances.

“Gave up a goal in the last two minutes on a mistake, a forward carrying the puck back into our end, instead of stopping and chipping it up the boards,” Barrett said.

The Red Eddies played far from perfect for the first 42-plus minutes of the game, but the mistakes weren’t glaring and Feldman stopped any that the Rams pounced on. They also stayed out of the box the entire game, which is a change from some of EL’s other games this season.

“From a coaching perspective, we played a little bit better, we were in a good hockey game,” Barrett said.

Another change for EL was on the scoreboard. The Red Eddies had been outscored 25-0 during a three-game losing streak entering Wednesday’s game. Feldman did his part to slow down the goals-against, while Eli Thibodeau gave EL its first goal since a 6-1 win over Mt. Ararat/Lisbon/Morse on Jan. 16.

Thibodeau crossed the Rams’ blue line and fired a shot past goalie Dalton Bowie to put the Red Eddies up 1-0 with a little bit less than five minutes to play in the second period.

“He really actually got a hold of that puck. He shot that puck very hard,” Barrett said. “And he’s a kid that you don’t typically see that from, he doesn’t usually get a hold of them like that.”

Eli McBride notched the assist on Thibodeau’s goal.

Bowie stopped 24 of 25 shots to get the win in net for the Rams, while Feldman saw 41 shots and stopped 39 of them.

“When he’s on, he’s pretty good,” Barrett said. “Gives us a chance to win, especially games like this, which he did tonight.”

“We can play much better than we did,” Foye said. “It was nice to get the win, very nice to get a win, but we got to look at the bigger picture.”

wkramlich@sunjournal.com