The Upper Montgomery Lightning face off on Wednesday afternoon against the Mount St. Joseph’s Gaels. This will be the Lightning’s second non-conference private school matchup of the season. Game time is scheduled for 4:00 pm at Laurel Ice Gardens. The Lightning have gotten off to an incredibly disappointing start to the season, one that was filled with so much pre-season promise. Thankfully, the team still has the opportunity to reach all of its pre-season goals.
Upper Montgomery will have very close to its full lineup for the game. It will be only the second time this season that the team will dress a full complement of forwards. Being able to run three full lines should allow the student athletes sufficient rest to compete hard the entire game. The third periods have been Upper Montgomery’s downfall with the team having a minus twelve goal differential in the final period over the first five games of the season. Upper Montgomery will be looking to reverse that trend against the Gaels.
Mount St. Joseph’s will be quite the test. While not a powerhouse like the more prominent private school teams, the Gaels are comparable with the top teams in the Montgomery Hockey Conference. In their opening game of the season the Gaels jumped out to a 3-1 lead over South River (a Maryland Student Hockey League state playoff participant last season), before having late game difficulties of their own. South River scored five unanswered goals and hung on for a 5-4 victory. Mount St. Joseph also had difficulty staying out of the penalty box taking six minor penalties during the game. Conversely, Upper Montgomery has earned only six powerplays all season long. Earning just six powerplays and scoring zero powerplay goals over the first five games of the season is completely inadequate.
Two troubling trends developed over the first couple of games this season. One, a lack of goal scoring, seems to have been rectified in last Tuesday’s 9-7 loss to Sherwood, a game in which Upper Montgomery led 3-0 after the first period and 4-1 mid-way through the game. The second issue is the poor finishes ad third period defensive breakdowns. This may be a result of the top skaters having to play excessive minutes each game as the team has played with a short bench throughout the season.
Returning to the lineup against the Gales will be Chris Hassett, Ryan Jacobson, and Owen Robbins. All three missed last Friday’s game against BCC while they were with their external travel teams. Olivia Robbins will also be in town looking to score in back to back games after notching her first goal of the season against the Barons playing in her first game of the year. Upper Montgomery’s success will be defined by how well the offensive leaders of the team perform. Nathan Cassel leads the team with 5GP, 2G, 5A. Chris Hassett is second on the team in scoring with 4GP, 3G, 3A. Both Hunter Cameron and Ryan Jacobson have scored two goals in three games. The difficulty for the Lightning has been getting the offense going, having scored only eight goals in the four games outside of the Sherwood contest.
Defensively, the team must be significantly better. Yes, the team has had to patch together the defensive pairings while working through the injury to Andrew Botti, but the defensive blunders have been massive. Most of the miscues have directly led to key opposition goals against. The forwards need to simply do a better job on the backcheck, and controlling the game with puck management. This will help the inexperienced defense and the forwards who are playing defense this season for the first time.
Mount St. Joseph’s scoring was evenly distributed in their game against South River. Forwards Aiden McIntyre and Ryan Currie had two assists. Four different Gaels’ student athletes scored in the game. Nate Carr was in net and stopped 24 of 29 shots on goal. With Mount St. Joseph’s being located in Baltimore, Upper Montgomery does not have a wide scouting report on the Gaels.
In net for Upper Montgomery is expected to be the varsity debut of 9th grade goalie Ilan Shterenberg. Shterenberg has played very well for the junior varsity this season having won all four starts and having posting two shutouts to begin his high school career. His season statistics are a .940 save percentage and a 1.03 goals against average. Facing the Gaels will be a step up in competition, but an excellent opportunity for Shterenberg to get a taste of varsity game action. If Shterenberg struggles, expect Landon Bernard to play the back half of the game. Bernard himself has struggled at times this season, so getting a break to relax and reset may prepare Bernard for the rest of the conference schedule.
Upper Montgomery is in desperate need of playing well and getting a positive result on Wednesday. A win over a private school program would be a terrific way to jump start the season heading into two difficult matchups sandwiching the Thanksgiving holiday against top Montgomery Hockey Conference rivals Walter Johnson and Churchill.
#UML, #Bleed Green, #Go Bolts!