On Friday night, the Upper Montgomery Lightning have an opportunity of a lifetime. A chance to pull off the biggest upset in the history of Maryland high school hockey. The Lightning will be facing off against the Churchill Bulldogs. Churchill has not lost a playoff game in the past nine seasons. The Bulldogs have won seven of the past eight Maryland high school state championships with only COVID interrupting the streak by preventing Churchill from competing in the 2021 state playoff tournament. Churchill is widely recognized as ‘the team’ in Maryland high school hockey. Game time is 9:00 pm at Rockville Ice Arena. Expect a raucous, vocal, and pro-Churchill crowd to be present adding to the delirious atmosphere.
Upper Montgomery has never before reached the second round of the Montgomery Hockey Conference division one playoff tournament. A win in Friday’s game would send the Lightning to the state playoffs for the first time in program history. The 2022 – 2023 season has been a season in which the team has achieved many firsts; winning the program’s first ever division one playoff game, beating Wootton for the first time ever, earning standings points against one of the top four programs in the county with a tie against BCC, and beating the number two ranked team in the county with its late season victory over Quince Orchard. The Quince Orchard win was against the highest ranked opponent that the Upper Montgomery program had ever beaten.
This game against Churchill will be an extremely difficult matchup for the young Lightning. Churchill will dress an array of AAA level travel hockey student athletes (possibly six) and the Bulldogs expect to continue their dominance. Upper Montgomery will have a big mountain to climb just to remain competitive in the game. In early November, in the team’s regular season matchup, Churchill prevailed easily by a score of 8-2.
In net for the Bulldogs will be either AAA goalie, senior Avery Schiff (4-3 record, 2.33 goals against average, .892 save percentage), or AAA goalie, 9th grader Mac Glazer (3-2-1 record, 3.41 goals against average, .875 save percentage). It will be a game time decision on who starts in net for the Bulldogs, or if Churchill will play both netminders during the game. For Upper Montgomery, Landon Bernard will again be between the pipes as he has been all season long. Bernard is coming off of a very strong outing versus St. Johns in Upper Montgomery’s first ever division one playoff victory, stopping 22 of 23 shots on goal. It was a crazy game in that Upper Montgomery had to play four minutes of game action without a goalie in net during the second period when Bernard lost a skate blade. For the season Bernard has a 7-6-1 record, a 3.74 goals against average, and an .858 save percentage. Throughout the entire game, expect Churchill to fire the puck at Bernard often with shots coming from long range and in bunches.
On defense, Montgomery Hockey Conference All Conference selection Samuel Strand steadies an inexperienced defense. This season, Strand was second on the Bulldogs in points with (12GP, 12G, 7A). Dalton Esko-Himmelfarb (11GP, 3G, 4A) will also see significant action versus the Lightning. The Churchill attack is so strong that often times their defense is overlooked.
On offense, when playing against the Bulldogs, it is pick your poison. With junior top tier forward Joshua Potenti back, the Lightning have to contend with three AAA level travel forwards; Potenti, Brook Chapman, and Ryan Wees, and then also highly talented AA level Montgomery Hockey Conference All Conference forward Zack Silver, who by the way tallied (15GP, 19G, 5A). In addition to the top end forwards, Churchill has plenty of depth. Brook Chapman (9GP, 7G, 4A), Asher Wang (8GP, 8G, 8A), and Daniel McNelis (11GP, 6G, 10A) will all be going concerns for the Upper Montgomery defense. Lightning forwards will need to play back in a defensive shell to clog up the ice and make it more difficult for Churchill to find open space in which to make plays with their superior talent.
Upper Montgomery will need to play a near perfect game just to remain competitive. Chris Hassett (13GP, 9G, 17A) and Nathan Cassell (10GP, 10G, 13A) will be counted on to provide offense. The entire team will need to pitch in and contribute. The game will hinge on how well Upper Montgomery defends as the Lightning will not outscore the Bulldogs in a back and forth offensive shootout. The team’s defenders will need to step up bigtime. George Benedick (12GP, 5G, 9A), Andrew Botti (11GP, 3G, 4A), and Ethan Hockey (13GP, 3G, 7A) will receive the bulk of the minutes on defense. However, it will not fall on these three experienced defensive skaters to try and contain Churchill. The entire Upper Montgomery roster will need to defend all over the ice and take away time and space from the Churchill forwards. Nothing short of an extraordinary effort will get the job done.
In a one game winner take all playoff matchup anything can happen. The Lightning will literally be trying to capture Lightning in a bottle and shock the world. Once the game is over late Friday evening the program will have a pretty good idea of how it stacks up moving forward into next season when Upper Montgomery is likely to be one of the better teams in the county. While the team has advanced farther than ever before and has accomplished a slew of firsts this season, beating ‘the team’ on Friday would blow the top off expectations for this season. Go Bolts!