The Upper Montgomery Lightning will host their first ever Division One playoff game Friday night against the St. Johns Cadets. The Lightning earned the home playoff game by virtue of finishing the regular season ranked seventh in the Montgomery Hockey Conference. It is the highest finish ever in the history of the program. The seventh seeded Lightning host the tenth seeded Cadets at 8:45 pm Friday night at Rockville Ice Arena.
Upper Montgomery’s long mid-season winning streak seems to be in the rearview mirror. Consecutive losses to Richard Montgomery and BCC to end the regular season dropped Upper Montgomery in the Montgomery Hockey Conference rankings. The team now has a much tougher path to the Maryland Scholastic Hockey League Maryland state playoff championship. The Lightning have never qualified for the state tournament.
Friday’s game is expected to be a slugfest. It will likely be a low scoring, physical, gritty, fight for every inch of the ice kind of game. Upper Montgomery will need to slow the game down as much as possible as the Lightning will be playing without two of the team’s top forwards; Nathan Cassell and Ryan Jacobson. Without this offensive firepower, the team will need contributions from all available skaters to make up for the missing offense. It will be extremely tough to score on St. Johns netminder Jack Faricy. Faricy is arguably the best goalie that the Lightning will face this season. He has a 3.58 goals against average and a .918 save percentage. If he can see the puck, he will stop the puck. He made 61 saves in a 2-0 loss to Whitman a few weeks ago. Faricy has been playing behind a very young defense, a defense that the Lightning will need to take advantage of to generate scoring opportunities. Upper Montgomery will need to get layers and layers of skaters in the shooting lanes. Traffic around the crease is a must to screen Faricy and deposit rebounds and garbage goals.
Landon Bernard will be looking to regain the form he displayed earlier this season when he won six of seven games. He has a respectable 3.93 goals against average and an .852 save percentage. When the team plays strong defense in front of him, the Lightning are unbeaten. In games where the Lightning play a free flowing, offensive, and ‘pretty’ hockey game, the results have not been so positive. Bernard will need to make several key saves for the Lightning to win on Friday. It would be a tremendous help if the team defense in front of him clogged up the center of the ice and blocked shots, eliminating Cadets scoring opportunities.
On defense the Lightning will need to play the game along the boards. Make it tough on St. Johns to operate in the offensive zone. Flip the puck out. Frustrate the Cadets forwards. Force St. Johns to continuously rewind in the neutral zone and chase the puck off of dump ins. If the Lightning get back to their mid-season form of playing a more defensively sound and compact system through the neutral zone, the team will have an outstanding chance of winning. St. Johns has struggled on offense for much of the season averaging exactly three goals per game. Upper Montgomery will need to focus on Teddy Kurowski (11GP, 7G, 6A), Noll Myers (11GP, 6G, 4A), and Will Spicer (9GP, 4G, 4A). On defense, Joseph Krauth also contributes from the blue line (10GP, 5G, 3A). The play of these four skaters will determine whether St. Johns can steal the victory.
As seems to be the case each week this season, on offense the Lightning will be shorthanded as noted above. The Upper Montgomery forward depth will be tested. Several student athletes will need to pick up additional shifts that would normally be given to their missing teammates. Someone will need to fill the void and produce some unexpected offense. Every single offensive opportunity will be huge. Capitalizing on those chances will determine the outcome of the game. The Lightning will need superior games from Chris Hassett (12GP, 9G, 16A), George Benedick (11GP, 5G, 9A), Brandon Bernard (10GP, 8G, 2A), Philip Shkeda (10GP, 5G, 5A), and Ethan Hockey (11GP, 3G, 7A). A big boost would be for Hunter Cameron to have a dominating game and provide an offensive spark. Contributions from Olivia Robbins, Bradley Cupples, and Andrew Botti will also be key to victory. It does not need to be just one skater elevating their game. The Lightning can come away with the win if the entire team plays as one unit and receives excellent performances from everyone.
Special teams are an area where the Lightning have improved over the course of the season. Since starting the season so poorly on the penalty kill (two of their first eight chances while down a skater), the Lightning have raised the penalty kill percentage to over seventy percent effective. On the powerplay, the Lightning have hovered around the twenty percent success rate all season and are currently at 21.6%. The bigger problem is that the team is generating less than three power play opportunities per game, limiting the team’s chances of scoring. A powerplay goal or two in a playoff game would really help.
The Lightning are hoping to break through and win their first ever division one playoff game. Doing so would place Upper Montgomery one upset win away from the state playoff tournament. It would be a step forward this season as the young Lightning roster progresses toward becoming a perennial power within the Montgomery Hockey Conference. A vision that is closer to reality than many people associated with high school hockey in the county believe. Is Upper Montgomery ready to announce its arrival as a force to be reckoned with? Or, will the season fizzle at the end leaving progress to be determined by how far the team can advance in the division two tournament later this month? Forty-five minutes of hockey Friday night will provide the answer with the Lightning faithful on hand to lend their support. Go Bolts!