The Upper Montgomery Lightning varsity squad is on the hunt for redemption this upcoming Friday night, Halloween when the team faces off against the Northwest / Quince Orchard Jaguars. Game time is 6:40 pm at Rockville Ice Arena. The Lightning still have a bad taste in their mouth resulting from giving away a five goal lead late in the second period before succumbing to the Silver Spring Blazers 8-7 last Friday evening. The Blazers winning goal was scored with less than four seconds remaining in the contest. Offensively, over the majority of the game, Upper Montgomery’s top line once again exploded through the opponent. The top line with contributions from defender Brady Berkhammer have scored fifteen goals in two games. These performances have made the other programs in the Montgomery Hockey Conference take notice. The Lightning were ranked as the second to last team in the conference preseason rankings. Now, after two weeks of conference play, Upper Montgomery leads the entire county in goals scored and is seemingly much better than several programs.
Each week, the Lightning will have to cobble together the team’s lineup as upper level students will miss playing in the high school games while they are out-of-town with their external travel teams. When the Lightning are playing with less than a full roster, the team’s depth will be severely tested. One of the more interesting components of this week’s high school action is that there is no school in Montgomery County on the Monday following the weekend. Thus, many travel teams are away at out-of-area tournaments this weekend. Additionally, families may be leaving town for the long three day weekend. So, maybe the primary key to the contest is which student athletes are actually in town and available to play in the game.
Upper Montgomery’s primary varsity goaltender junior 16U AAA Ilan Shterenberg will play part of the game against the Jaguars before he departs town with his external travel team. Shterenberg opened the season pitching a 25 save shutout against the Stars for the first shutout of his varsity career. With Shterenberg absent, Upper Montgomery’s primary junior varsity goalie, sophomore 16U Lower A Porter Stutsrim-Lyons stepped in last week and played very well for two periods. The entire team broke down in the third period where the Lightning gave up six goals, including four in the last four minutes of action. With Stutsrim-Lyons not slated to play in the junior varsity game against the Northwest / Quince Orchard / Wootton combined junior varsity team, he may get the call to play the remainder of the varsity game. Otherwise, one of the Lightning’s two junior varsity ninth grade goalie will be in net playing the remainder of the varsity game.
Northwest / Quince Orchard will start sophomore 16U Lower A goalie Sean Wyatt as he is the only goalie on their roster. The biggest issue is whether Wyatt will also be playing in the junior varsity game directly prior. Wyatt has played in both of the Jaguars varsity games suffering the two losses. The Jaguars are much more competitive this year than in seasons past. They opened the season losing by one goal (4-3) to Rockville / Magruder. Last week, they scored eight goals but fell to the DC Stars 10-8. Wyatt has fared much better at the junior varsity level where he is 2-0, with a 1.88 goals against average, and a .919 save percentage. Upper Montgomery will be trying to repeat their scoring barrage from the past couple of weeks to prove the fifteen goals was not just an early season flourish but performances that can be matched week in and week out.
On defense, the Lightning will role with maybe three possibly four defenders. It might get to the point where all forwards take shifts on defense to spread out the ice time. The Lightning’s leading defensive scorer, 18U AA senior Brady Berkhammer should return to lead the Lightning’s backline. He suffered an upper body injury last weekend with his external travel team and is listed as day to day. He has been exceedingly good so far this season with nine assists over his first two games. Last season, he led the Lightning in assists with fifteen. He is right back at it again this season. Berkhammer will need to play a very strong game against the Jaguars to make up for Lillian Robbins missing the game due to being out-of-town with her external travel team. Sophomore 16U Lower A Matt Rivera fared pretty well against the DC Stars playing almost exclusively with Berkhammer. He has played much more confidently this season in the Lightning’s junior varsity games and during practice. He will see plenty of ice time once again against Northwest / Quince Orchard. Lightning junior 16U Upper A Miles Wendland has taken on a larger role this season. The team’s alternate captain is a steady, smooth skating defender. Wendland is rarely caught out of position. A challenge for the lanky defender will be bodying up and playing in the Lightning’s new more physical defensive style. In this game the defensive focus will be on shutting down the Jaguars leading scorer senior 18U AA Ethan Custodio. With the Lightning having the last line change, expect that Custodio will be forced to play entirely against students at his own level or better. The powerful offensive focus of Upper Montgomery’s first line will challenge Custodio to play defense himself or allow the Lightning to skate up and down the ice with constant odd skater chances.
The Jaguars leading returning defender is senior former 18U AA Roman Martin. Martin is the Jaguars second leading scorer (2GP, 2G, 1A). Martin has scored in each of the Northwest / Quince Orchard’s first two games. The Lightning forwards will have to keep track of Martin sneaking in from the points in the offensive zone and jumping into the rush up ice from behind. Other defenders who will be deployed by the Jaguars are 16U AA Andrew Isaacson, junior George Mason, and ninth grade defender Evelin Tulchinsky.
Offensively, the Lightning coaches figured the team would have a tough time scoring this season. Well, that assumption has gone out the window. Upper Montgomery leads the county in scoring at 7.5 goals per game. If they play up to their standards, Upper Montgomery’s top line of senior 18U AAA center and team captain Owen Robbins (1GP, 1G, 4A), flanked by fellow senior and last year’s leading scorer Philip Shkeda (2GP, 5G, 2A), paired with ninth grade 16U AA Miles Gleason (2GP, 9G, 3A) have been DOMINANT. The line has scored all fifteen of the Lightning’s goals. Robbins returns to the lineup after missing the Silver Spring game as he was out of town with his external travel team. His absence forced the coaching staff to shuffle lines last week with ninth grade center Wyatt Ostrander contributing two assists filling in for Robbins. Both Gleason and Shkeda scored hat-tricks against the Stars. Gleason followed up his week one performance with five goals and an assist in week two. Shkeda had two goals and two assists versus the Blazers. The balance of the forward lines will need to do their jobs playing a more defensive style, recognizing when Custodio is on the ice, making quick line changes, and preventing goals at all costs.
Unlike last week’s game where Silver Spring scored by committee, ALL of the Northwest / Quince Orchard offense will originate and go through Custodio. While this season he is second in the county behind Gleason in goals scored (2GP, 8G, 1A), last year he produced (13GP, 20G, 11A). As a sophomore he scored 26 goals. He is bringing it in his final high school season powering past the fifty goals plateau last week qualifying for automatic induction into the Maryland Student Hockey League Hall of Fame. Lightning forwards will have to be aware of getting sucked in too much when Custodio is on the ice giving him the opportunity where he can then act as a distributor to wide open Jaguars in front of the Upper Montgomery net. Custodio has a history of scoring three points per game against the Lightning which he did in all three meetings between the teams last season. Young forwards Kuba Okrasa and Nicholas Berl will try and provide Custodio with some offensive support.
Upper Montgomery will not be able to sneak up on teams in the county the rest of the season. Not with having the league’s first (Gleason) and third leading goal scorers (Shkeda), the top two distributors in assists (Berkhammer by far and Robbins), and the first, second, and third leading scorers in points per game (Gleason, Berkhammer, and Robbins). Shkeda must be slouching off because at 3.5 points per game, he is seventh. While all seems good momentarily on the offensive side of the house, the only way that Upper Montgomery will consistently win games is by being buttoned up on the defensive side of the ice. The Northwest / Quince Orchard game will come down to which team is better in their own defensive end of the ice. Will fatigue with low roster sizes impede either team? As the game progresses, will catastrophic mental breakdowns occur as the students tire? Upper Montgomery played through a short roster last week. Hopefully the team is prepared for Friday night’s Halloween tilt where Upper Montgomery looks to make it a scary and ghoulish affair for the visiting squad dressed in black.
#Redemption, #UML, #Bleed Green, #Go Bolts!