In terms of difficulty, guessing which player will score St. Paul’s biggest goals is an exercise akin to handicapping a drag race between a moped and a Maserati.

When the Celts need a goal, Kieran Gallagher gets them one. It’s happened that way 36 times this season. Why wouldn’t it happen again?

So with St. Paul and St. Louis Park deadlocked in sudden-death overtime on Wednesday, May 19, it only figured that if the Celts were going to win, Gallagher would be the one getting it done.

Then a strange thing happened on the path to predictability.

Someone named Benjamin Barnard, a St. Paul junior attackman who has missed half the season and had posted exactly zero statistics of any kind, found himself standing 10 yards in front of the St. Louis Park goal, holding the ball and contemplating where to shoot.

Just like that the No. 1-ranked Celts beat St. Louis Park 10-9 in a stunning conclusion to a wildly entertaining game.

With the victory, St. Paul remains one of just two undefeated Minnesota Boys Scholastic Lacrosse Association teams (Shattuck-St. Mary's is the other).

“It wasn’t planned,” Barnard said about the winning goal while nodding toward Gallagher. “It was supposed to be him.

“It just sort of happened.”

St. Paul, ranked No. 1 in the MBSLA, improved to 8-0 with the victory over the No. 3-ranked Orioles (11-3) in a rematch of a state semifinal from last season. The game lived up to its billing, with neither team ever holding more than a two-goal lead.

St. Paul rallied from an early two-goal deficit and St. Louis Park did the same in the closing minutes. Art Elmer’s goal – his third of the game for the Orioles – came with 20 seconds left and forced the overtime.

Then it was Barnard’s turn to be the hero. And a most unlikely one, considering he had transferred from St. Paul Como Park to Roseville and needed a waiver just to be eligible to play. The recent death of his grandmother also proved difficult for Barnard, St. Paul coach Ben Mooney said.

“He wasn’t showing up for practices,” Mooney said. “Since I’ve known Ben for a while, I reached out to him. His mom said he was having a hard time dealing with the loss. I told him, ‘If you want to use lacrosse as an outlet, you can,’ because he hadn’t been up until then.”

Barnard eventually resumed practicing, but Mooney said he had fallen behind both physically and mentally.

“He wasn’t anywhere near being in playing shape,” Mooney said.

And now? Well, Barnard seems to be doing just fine, thank you very much.

“That was his first goal of the season, and it was a big one,” Gallagher said. “That was awesome for him to do that.

"It was a real morale boost for our whole team to just get that win. And coming from a guy like that, it was amazing.”

The loss spoiled another brilliant performance from St. Louis Park junior attackman Max Bergeron, who scored three goals and has battled Gallagher for the state scoring lead in recent weeks. It also rendered the Orioles’ dramatic comeback moot.

“I didn’t want to be in overtime, I didn’t want to be in that spot,” St. Louis Park coach Kevin Reed said. “It hurts a little bit, in all honesty.”

1. Kieran Gallagher, St. Paul
Cobra quick senior attackman (pictured below) notched his third six-goal game of the season, giving him 36 in just eight games. He now has 53 points, easily the most in the state among MBSLA players.

2. Benjamin Barnard, St. Paul
Celts attackman picked an opportune time to notch his first goal of the season, ripping a 15-yard shot in overtime that found the goal and kept the No. 1-ranked Celts unbeaten.

3. Max Bergeron, St. Louis Park
When the junior attackman wasn't drawing penalties he was scoring goals; standard operating procedure for Bergeron, who notched three more goals to give him a state-best 37 in the MBSLA.

Small package, big results
Kieran Gallagher’s six-goal performance against St. Louis Park gives him 36 for the season, second only to the 37 scored by the Orioles’ Max Bergeron. Gallagher also has 17 assists, giving him a state-best 53 points among MBSLA players. When told he had just scored six goals in the No. 1-ranked Celts’ victory over one of the state’s best defensive teams, the pint-sized Gallagher flashed a big smile and laughed. “I did?” was his response. Apparently, the only thing Gallagher, who stands 5-foot-10 and weighs 145 pounds lacks – other than size – is an ego. “Every time the third quarter rolls around, every team knows about Kieran, so I tell everyone else you better be ready,” St. Paul coach Ben Mooney said. “Because usually there’s a triple-team coming. That’s the nice thing about having Kieran is it opens the rest of the field up for everybody.” Gallagher, a senior, intends to play at Finger Lakes Community College in upstate New York next season.

How to stop him?
Although fully aware of Gallagher’s game-breaking potential, St. Louis Park didn’t employ any exotic defensive schemes to slow St. Paul’s offensive dynamo. “We knew a little bit about what (Gallagher) was going to try to do. Our deal was just to slide hard and slide fast,” St. Louis Park junior defenseman Spencer Weckwerth said. “Five of those six goals he scored were probably on transitions, when we missed a slide up top. So we know what we are working on in practice the next couple of days.”

Until they meet again
The Celts, who draw players from 10 St. Paul-area high schools, have a history of playoff success but, surprisingly, never have advanced past the state semifinals. St. Louis Park won the MBSLA championship in 2008 and was runner-up to Orono last season. "Right now we’re a little hard on ourselves, we know we’re a better team than this," the Orioles' Weckwerth said. "We’ll see them later, though. That’s when it really counts." First-round playoff games within each of the MBSLA's four conferences are scheduled for June 7-8.  The league's championship game is set for 7:30 p.m. on June 19 at Concordia University in St. Paul.