Marquette’s Brandon Campbell, left, crashes into Kingsford‚‘s Daunte Fortner Thursday night, at Lakeview Arena in Marquette. (Journal photo by Rachel Oakley)

MARQUETTE — Depth can provide a huge advantage in hockey, and Marquette Senior High School made sure to utilize that in an MHSAA Division 2 regional playoff game on Thursday night.

The Redmen wore down Kingsford’s defense, and with the help of a scoring surge in the third period, topped the Flivvers 6-3 to advance to the regional championship game.

Marquette faces Muskegon Mona Shores at 1 p.m. Saturday in Gaylord. Mona Shores scored a 5-0 shutout of Petoskey at home on Thursday.

Saturday’s winner returns to Gaylord on Tuesday night to face the Grand Rapids-Kalamazoo region winner, either Ada Forest Hills Eastern or Portage Northern.

On Thursday, Ryan Morrissey scored twice for Marquette as did Daunte Fortner for Kingsford.

“We really just tired them out,” Marquette head coach Doug Garrow said. “They were only skating with a few forwards and we were trying to roll four lines at them.

“They played hard and it was a good game, but we got some good breaks in the third and that’s what you need to win.”

The Flivvers weathered the storm in the second period, but Marquette’s deep roster was just too much to handle for any longer than that.

“We were in it and we tried to hang on as long as we could,” Kingsford head coach Jim Peterson said. “We’ve only got two lines and they’re deeper than we are. They’re a good team and they just wore us down.”

Kingsford struck first at the 12-minute mark of the opening period when Fortner snapped a wrister past Marquette goalie Tyler Bergwall on the power play.

Marquette answered back, though, with 2:16 left when Morrissey scored off a rebound. A minute after that, the Flivvers grabbed the lead again on Fortner’s second goal when the puck squirted into the net during a scrum in front.

However, Marquette got the equalizer with nine seconds remaining before the first intermission as Hunter Doucette got a nice feed from Sean O’Connor and beat Kingsford goalie Trevor Anderson.

“Ryan had some really nice goals tonight and Sean made a great pass to Hunter on his goal and that was big,” Garrow said. “We got contributions from everyone tonight and it was nice to see everyone pitching in.”

The Redmen took their first lead in the second period on a rather lucky bounce. A Marquette shot went off the backboard and ricocheted back to the front of the net, where Anderson couldn’t collect it and Joe Phillips tapped it into the open net.

Marquette had a handful of other chances to pad their lead as Spencer Samppala hit two pipes and Morrissey almost tucked the puck under Anderson on a partial breakaway, but instead only held a slim 3-2 advantage at the next break.

In the third period, Morrissey cashed in his second goal as he gathered a loose puck at center ice before going top shelf on Anderson.

Kingsford wasn’t done, though. Just 13 seconds after Morrissey’s goal, Eamonn Weed scored on a power play. There was some debate after the goal whether it should’ve counted, but it was upheld.

“We survived the second period and gave it our all, but it just wasn’t enough,” Peterson said. “We also made some mistakes that they were able to capitalize on and they deserved to win.”

With momentum starting to shift toward the Flivvers, the Redmen got back on track with 4:43 left when O’Connor slammed a juicy rebound in. Marquette capped off the scoring just 31 seconds later when Luke Beerman streaked down the far boards, skated wide of Anderson and beat him high glove.

“I’m feeling confident,” Garrow said. “A lot of the guys have been here before, so I don’t think they’re uncomfortable with the situation.

“The deeper you go in the playoffs, the harder the teams get, so you have to be better every game. You can’t have an off day, so we have to make sure that we bring our ‘A’ game.”

Ryan Stieg can be reached at 906-228-2500, ext. 252. His email address is rstieg@miningjournal.net.