L. Palmer tips Smoky Hill to stay unbeaten; Horizon-Front Range contest one for the archives

As Week 13 CHSIHL action wound down the State Playoff puzzle pieces pre-emptiveley began to fall into place. It was a week that saw Lewis Palmer remain unbeaten and the Horizon-Front Range roller hockey teams deliver a blockbuster game, that is if you like speed, skill, defense, great goaltending and just a little drama for good measure! And so the following is a paid political announcement:

The CHSIHL State Championship Playoffs begin on Friday evening, April 18 th at the Bladium in Denver. The playoffs continue at the Bladium on Saturday, and they conclude with award ceremonies and the Class 5A Championship game at 8pm on Sunday evening, April 20 th at the grand new Parker Fieldhouse!

So you're Lewis Palmer HS Coach Bruce Clark and your team has already clinched the top seed in the State playoffs. What do you do to keep your experienced, talented team interested? Well, it didn't take long for Coach Clark and his team to find out. And they got some help from the opposition. The Rangers took the floor at the CSC rink in Monument Wednesday evening against second place Smoky Hill, with whom they'd battled to an 8-8 tie in the season opener. Right out of the gate, Buff sniper Rees Bernot hurried down the floor and got close enough to force LP goalie Colin Anonson to make a good save early. Bernot followed the shot with a slashing penalty and the Buffs began a parade to the penalty box that would be their undoing. Bernot's sniping LP counterpart, Keith Yates, then scored a pp goal to put LP ahead 1-0 at 20:49. LP's Mike Friel added a second goal with help from Class 5A assist leader Nick Galvin for a 2-0 LP lead. Just 1:38 later, Buff defenseman Jose Ochoa went end to end and got all of a slap shot from the left circle to make the score 2-1 at 18:16. After a handful of fine saves by Anonson, it was Friel again, pushing a rebound past Buff goalie Dylan Secrest for a 3-1 LP lead, followed by a Yates steal and clean cut breakaway against an unprotected Secrest for a 4-1 lead with 8:12 left in the first half. With 1:23 left in the half and LP working on a two man advantage, LP's Zach Bever lit the lamp for a 5-1 lead at intermission. And despite a potential momentum changing goalie switch to Kevin Dwyer post intermission, the penalty damage continued for Smoky Hill with Yates on a one timer laser from the left circle. Yates great shot was followed by a demonstration of the multifaceted scoring skills of league co-scoring leader Mike Fisk. First showing first great touch by deftly tipping in a shot from the point, Fisk followed it just minuts later with a brute force smash from the goalmouth through Dwyer's pads and into the net for a fourth straight LP power play goal. And with that, LP had a commanding 8-3 lead with almost 17 minutes left in the game. Yet the Buffaloes would not go quietly. Jose Ochoa scored unassisted and then Rees Bernot scored two goals to put the Buffs within striking distance at 8-6 with 2:25 remaining. But the power play damage was too much to overcome and Lewis Palmer remained unbeaten with an 8-6 victory. Coach Clark observed, "we got a lot of work on our power play. That by itself was priceless...and the power play looked real good". Smoky Coach Pete Sarnataro, voicing some frustration, added, "It seemed like every time we got a little bit of momentum going, we'dget called for a penalty and have to start all over again from another goal behind. I don't like to put it all on penalties... I talked to the refs after the game and told them how I felt .It's a tough way to win a game" .

At the Bladium on Saturday evening, Horizon and Front Range met head on in a game dripping with playoff implications. Front Range had a chance to move into second place and a possible #2 seed in the upcoming playoffs. Horizon, coming off last week's dizzying 7-7 last second tie with Smoky Hill needed a win to hold on to a top four seed that was there for the taking by at least three different teams. To top it off, the teams' makeup consisted of a group of players from the Arvada/Thornton area who were well known to each other, some having been teammates in different venues over the years. With a big crowd gathered in the stands and up in the balcony in anticipation, lots of good natured chatter filled the air during warm ups and until the opening puck was dropped. And so it was that in a game featuring top 5A skill players like Wes Schaeffer and Zach Fleming and goalie Devon Sherwood, it was Horizon's comparatively low profile Adam Steinberg who surprised Sherwood with a rising snapshot to give Horizon the early lead just 2:37 into the game. Overall, the Hawks seemed to have a little bit more spark in their wheels in the early going, and Steinberg again made his presence felt with solid backchecking in the defensive zone and then forcing goalie Sherwood to make one of several outstanding saves to keep the score 1-0. Not to be outdone, the Hawks Matt Lodge came up with his share of stops, especially a big stick save to thwart FR's Zach Fleming later in the first half. As the waning seconds of the half wound down, it was Adam Steinberg who again put himself in the perfect position to fire a low shot past Sherwood to give Horizon a 2-0 lead that they took to the end of the half. With goalies' Lodge and Sherwood swapping big save after big save, the score remained the same until with 11:20 the complexion began to change and the ingredients started to percolate. FR's Joe Rohleder was charged with a five minute major penalty for butt-ending, putting FR down a man for a full five minutes, already down two goals. Just a minute later, FR was whistled for another infraction to put themselves at a two man disadvantage. However, in an unexpected reversal, Horizon took two penalties of their own to nullify their advantage over the ensuing minutes and combined with Sherwood's magic glove and pads, FR hung in with the two goal deficit staring them in the eye. Then with 6:46 remaining, Jake Huff set up the ever dangerous Paul Solis for a sizzler the force of which ricocheted off Lodge's pad and rolled up over his head and into the net for a pp goal, cutting the Hawk lead to 2-1. FR called a timeout at 4:36 and when play resumed they continued to turn on the heat and hit pay dirt when Max Sjeda's rocket caromed off the Horizon defenseman and into the net to tie the score with 3:17 left in the game. Leveraging off the momentum of their second goal, FR put on a furious forecheck that culminated in a bad bounce off the referee and back to Solis who sent a lightning pass to defenseman Jake Huff who buried the puck behind Lodge to put FR up 3-2 with 2:03 left! With the game thermometer reaching it's peak and Horizon feverishly trying to recover some of the magic of the early going, Hawk playmaker and leading scorer Wes Schaeffer was in the right spot to tip in a rebound made possible by what appeared to be a teammate's stick very close to being above the shoulder. But the play went on and Horizon was back in business 3-3 with 1:35 left. Soon after FR took another penalty. Shorthanded, FR's Zach Fleming slipped past the Horizon D, who were setting up for the pp. Fleming got off a shot that bounced off the post and skidded into the corner with the clock ticking down at 39 sec. Horizon, quickly gathering up the puck moved back down to the FR zone, getting the puck in deep. With a horde of players crowding the net and the puck bouncing all over, it was none other than Adam Steinberg, poking in his third goal of the game for the hat trick and a 4-3 Hawk lead with 17 seconds left on the scoreboard clock! And with so little time and so much sweat already left on the Bladium floor, that's how the game ended. Front Range coaches Jon Sjeda and Dan Huff smiled through the pain of a tough loss but marveled at the quality of the game, "Just a great game..I mean it's a tough one to swallow cause we lost and we needed the points...but it was just great hockey. We had our chances...but Matt Lodge was out of this world! And that's really saying something because our own goalie (Devon Sherwood) was fantastic". An ebullient Horizon Coach Owen Schaeffer revealed, "I had a real good feeling about it before the game started. The boys were real excited to play this one....ya know a lot of the guys on Front Range are friends and prior teammates. I knew it was gonna be close and tough and we'd really have to play our best to win. And when Adam got that first goal early ...I just thought... great start!...boy Adam had the hot stick didn't he?...after a while the guys just kept trying to get the puck to him. After that third goal, man that was brutal...I was afraid we'd get down but the boys kept up it up."

Later on Saturday night at the Rocky Mountain Roller rink in Lakewood, another game with significant playoff bearing took place. It was the home team Chatfield HS Chargers taking on Douglas County. Both teams badly needed a win to keep alive hopes of grabbing one of the few remaining playoff spots. Early on the Huskies took it pretty hard to the Chargers. But Chargers goalie Jesse Schluetter did everything but build a wall in front of the Chatfield net, stopping every kind of shot imaginable. Schluetter's inspirational play spurred his teammates to jump ahead 1-0, with Michael Bonne zipping a low shot from the right face-off circle past goalie Jonathan Fritts with 9:15 gone in the first half. Schluetter continued his stellar play as the half wore on, making a big stop on a breakaway effort by Sam Bruns, stuffing Alex Vlahinos on a close in jam, and then stick checking away another 2 on 1 Huskies scoring opportunity. It's been observed by many a hockey wag that a goalie only has so many great saves in them in any given game. And so the Huskies were finally able to solve Schluetter as Vlahinos made a fine crossing move and flipped a backhand shot over Schluetter's glove to tie the score at 1 with 2:57 remaining in the first half. Soon after Sam Bruns set up Mike McCaffrey to punch in a short range goal for a 2-1 Huskies lead with just three seconds left in the first half! Late goals being the bane of most hockey teams, the Chargers seemed to be unable to re-group as the Huskies poured it on at the outset of the second half with Skylar McKnight, Tucker Davis, and Nick Ramsey scoring goals to give the Huskies a commanding lead with only five minutes gone in the second half. The Chargers briefly rallied to draw within 3, but the Huskies put the game on ice when Fritts made an outstanding pad save to deny the Chargers' Joey Waring on a breakaway only to have Huskies Skylar McKnight grab the loose puck and break away to the other end to bury a low shot past Schluetter to make it a 7-3 score with 10:54 remaining. The Chargers managed a late goal by William Bonne but time ran out soon after and Douglas County took home a critical 7-3 win. Huskies Coach Bob Davis commented, "Well, we really needed this one. We get two games next weekend and we just need to play like we did tonight".

In other CHSIHL action, the Columbine Rebels prevailed 6-3 against Highlands Ranch with Kevin McCluskey and Garth Penman chipping in a pair of goals each, setting up a do or die situation when they take on arch-nemesis Chatfield this weekend at RMR in Lakewood. Mountain Vista rebounded to stay in the thick of the playoff hunt with an 8-2 drubbing of Fort Collins that saw Kyle Brooks continue a great season with another hat trick. Cherry Creek kept playoff hopes alive with Conor Parker scoring two goals in a 5-2 victory. And Sunday morning brought a great Easter basket for Highlands Ranch, who notched their first victory of the season with a monster come from behind win over Rocky Mountain. Tyler Richardson registered a goal and three assists as the Falcons outscored Rocky Mountain 6-2 in the second half for an amazing 8-7 win.

As previously mentioned, the CHSIHL Varsity 5A regular season wraps up this coming weekend and a quick look at schedules/standings indicates pretty clearly that at least three of the contests will have a bearing on the final 5A seeding, as only the top eight teams are granted playoff seeds. It appears there's an outside chance that Douglas County, the only team with two games remaining, could potentially vault up to one of the top four seeds with a strong showing this weekend. Further, there's no doubt that Cherry Creek, Chatfield and Columbine are in must win situations. So take a ride out to your local participating CHSIHL roller rink and you probably won't be disappointed! Games being played at various rinks around the Front Range metro areas as follows: