The Upper Montgomery Lightning open the second half of the varsity season this Friday evening against the Northwest / Quince Orchard Jaguars. The meeting is a matchup of the two programs ranked at the bottom of the Montgomery Hockey Conference standings. Each team brings their 1-5 record into the beginning of the second half of the league schedule. The Lightning will be on the the hunt for redemption as Northwest / Quince Orchard walloped Upper Montgomery 9-3 in the team’s earlier matchup the season. Game time is 8:45 pm at Rockville Ice Arena.
The Lightning still have a bad taste in their mouth resulting from allowing Jaguars senior center Ethan Custodio to do whatever he pleased during first meeting. Custodio scored six times against Lightning, with five of his goals coming on clean breakaways. It was a terrible defensive performance by Upper Montgomery considering that Custodio is the most talented student athlete for Northwest / Quince Orchard. The Lightning’s entire defensive game plan was designed to focus on him.
Recently, each week, the Lightning have had to cobble together the team’s lineup as upper level students have been missing the high school games while they were out-of-town with their external travel teams. Coupled with injuries and medical absences of two of the Lightning top offensive threats have created fluctuating game day rosters from week to week. When the Lightning are playing with less than a full roster, the team’s depth has been severely tested. Upper Montgomery has many ninth graders and sophomores stepping into key roles a couple of years before they are physically ready to play high school varsity level hockey.
Upper Montgomery’s primary varsity goaltender junior 16U AAA Ilan Shterenberg will play in net for the second consecutive game and for only the third time this season. Shterenberg opened the season pitching a 25 save shutout against the DC Stars for the first shutout of his varsity career. Last game he made 46 saves in a defeat at the hands of the Richard Montgomery Rockets. He kept the team in the game with many quality saves over the first two periods of the game. Shterenberg enters the contest with a .900 save percentage and a 3.56 goals against average. Northwest / Quince Orchard will start sophomore 16U Lower A goalie Sean Wyatt as he is the only goalie on their roster. The Jaguars are much more competitive this year than in seasons past. Wyatt has been much more effective this season with a better complement of defenders in front of him. Although he has a 1-5 record, his personal statistics are an .849 save percentage and a 5.83 goals against average. Upper Montgomery will be trying to repeat their scoring barrage from the past couple of weeks as the team looks to score enough to counteract Custodio’s influence on the game.
On defense, the Lightning will role with four defenders once again. It might get to the point where all forwards take shifts on defense to spread out the ice time. The Lightning’s leading defensive (and overall) scorer, senior 18U AA Brady Berkhammer has been awesome this season, (6GP, 7G, 11A). He is tied with Custodio for the county lead in scoring with 18 points. He is by far the leading defensive scorer, six points clear of the closest defensive scorer in the county and for all of the Maryland Student Hockey League. Berkhammer will need to play a very strong defensive game against the Jaguars. He may be asked to shadow Custodio all over the ice. Sophomore 16U Lower A Matt Rivera (6GP, 2A) will likely pair with Lightning junior 16U Upper A Miles Wendland (6GP, 1G, 2A) who has taken on a larger role this season. The team’s alternate captain is a steady, smooth skating defender who is rarely caught out of position. At times, a challenge for the lanky defender has been bodying up playing in the Lightning’s more physical defensive style. As mentioned throughout this game preview, the Upper Montgomery defense’s primary (maybe only) focus will be on shutting down Jaguars leading scorer, senior 18U AA Ethan Custodio (5GP, 16G, 2A). With the Jaguars having the last line change as the home team, expect that Custodio will pick and choose his spots against the Lightning’s depth skaters to try and be more assertive offensively during those shifts.
The Jaguars leading returning defender is senior former 18U AA Roman Martin. Martin is the Jaguars third leading scorer (6GP, 3G, 3A). Martin scored a powerplay goal against the Lightning in the first meeting. Upper Montgomery 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 the play. 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 when the top line is all together. Upper Montgomery’s top line of senior 18U AAA center and team captain Owen Robbins (3GP, 2G, 7A), flanked by fellow senior and last season’s leading scorer Philip Shkeda (4GP, 6G, 4A), paired with ninth grade 16U AA Miles Gleason (3GP, 9G, 3A) have been DOMINANT. Unfortunately, the trio has played together only twice this season as Robbins has missed time with his external travel team. Shkeda is still out for the next month or so with an upper body injury. The good news is that Gleason returns from his own recent month long absence due to a medical issue. Next week, it is anticipated that Robbins will be back in action for the Lightning. So, the team is getting its top line forward members back slowly over the course of the next several weeks. In their absence, junior 16U Upper A forward Aiden Zheng (5GP, 2G, 3A) has stepped up and provided a spark. He has scored in the previous two games. His hustle, energy, and playmaking are an example to the younger students who should be watching how Zheng plays away from the puck.
ALL of the Northwest / Quince Orchard offense originates and goes through Custodio. He leads the county in goals with sixteen. At this pace, he will very likely exceed his last two year’s of production (13GP, 20G, 11A) last year. As a sophomore he scored 26 goals. He is bringing it in his final high school season powering past the fifty goals plateau to qualify him for automatic induction into the Maryland Student Hockey League Hall of Fame. Lightning forwards will have to be aware of getting sucked into to the play too much when Custodio is on the ice. Upper Montgomery just can’t give him time and space like last game where he had five breakaway goals. Custodio has a history of scoring at least three points per game against the Lightning which he did in all three meetings between the teams last season. Young forwards Thomas Kruhlak (5GP, 3G, 1A), (Kuba Okrasa (5G, 1G, 3A), and Nicholas Berl (5G, 2G, 5A) will try and provide Custodio with some offensive support, not that he needs a whole lot of assistance.
The only way that Upper Montgomery will get out of their current five game losing streak and consistently win games is by being buttoned up on the defensive side of the ice. The Lightning must suffocate the game and play very physical against high powered offensive skaters. The goaltending also needs to be better. There have been several games recently when a soft goal or two against has deflated the team. The Northwest / Quince Orchard game will come down to which team is better in their own defensive end of the ice. Will the Lightning skaters be able to limit and contain Custodio, or will the team allow him to skate all over the ice unencumbered. Custodio’s performance alone will dictate the outcome of this game.
#Redemption, #UML, #Bleed Green, #Go Bolts!