Payoff for a penalty
WARRENDALE— Take a penalty, take over momentum.
Seneca Valley turned that trick Tuesday night while posting a 7-4 PIHL Class AAA hockey playoff victory over Fox Chapel at Warrendale BladeRunners.
Shorthanded goals by Matt Jarrett and Mike Rohm six seconds apart in the first period gave the Raiders a 2-1 lead and set up a five-goal opening period.
"That was the key momentum change, no question about it,"Seneca Valley coach Mike Schall said. "We came out sluggish tonight. They came out ready to play and jumped on us.
"It took us a little while to work out the playoff nerves, I guess."
Fox Chapel (7-12-2), a winner just once in its final eight regular season games, scored the game's first goal less than three minutes into the contest. Raiders goaltender Scott Van Horn couldn't locate the rebound after stopping a Colin Cheng shot and the Foxes' Andrew McCoy fired the puck into the net before Van Horn could recover.
Less than two minutes later, Seneca Valley's Andrew Tang was in the penalty box for holding the stick and the Raiders seemingly were in trouble.
But not for long.
SV defenseman Joe Sasala's cross-ice pass sent Jarrett in alone on a breakaway before the Raiders captain beat goalie Richard Gerber with a wrist shot to knot the game.
Off the center-ice faceoff following the goal, SV's Logan Pfeffer nudged the puck ahead to Mike Rohm, who split two defensemen and flipped the puck past Gerber just before being knocked to the ice.
"Rohm's a strong, physical player and he was able to ward off both of those guys,"Schall said. "That was a spectacular goal."
Seneca Valley scored only five shorthanded goals this season before popping two in the net so quickly Tuesday.
<table width="300" height="275" border="0" align="right" valign="top" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0"><tr><td><embed src="/assets/mov/BE4070136.MOV" width="320" height="250" autostart="true" loop="false" ></embed></td></tr><tr><td align="center"><a href="http://www.apple.com/quicktime/" target="_blank"><span class="style11">Requires Quicktime Media Player </a><br><font size="1" face="Tahoma, Times New Roman">Video by Brandon Gerthoffer</font></span><td></tr></table>"Those plays were huge,"Jarrett said. "We needed to get back into the game somehow and our whole team got excited by those two plays."The shorthanded tallies were followed by first-period goals from Pfeffer, Tyler Mesisca and Pfeffer again. Mesisca's goal and Pfeffer's second tally occurred 29 seconds apart."We started out fine, then our kids got totally away from the game plan,"Fox Chapel coach Jim Damp said. "We've had plenty of five-minute stretches where we've let games get away from us."Once we were down 5-1, it became a pride thing for us. It came down to how our seniors wanted to remember their last game."Gerber, a sophomore, allowed five goals on 11 first-period shots. Freshman Will Betts played the final two periods between the pipes for the Foxes."It wasn't Richard's fault and I told him that,"Damp said. "We were giving up breakaways, letting guys walk out of the corners right in front of our net untouched. ... You can't win hockey games that way. I had to try lighting a fire under our guys somehow."Besides the two shorthanded goals, Seneca Valley (16-4-1) scored twice on four power play opportunities and killed five of six Fox Chapel power plays."We worked hard on the power play since our last game and it paid off for us,"Schall said. "We had much better flow and developed a lot of scoring chances."John Raymus and Sam Jarrett added second-period goals for the Raiders, who were blanked in the third period and had to kill off two penalties in the final 15 minutes."Our level of play dropped off a bit in the third,"Matt Jarrett admitted. "But we were able to stay the course."Sasala had three assists. Andrew Tang, the Raiders' leading scorer with 17 goals and 34 points, was held to one assist. Seven Seneca Valley players have scored at least nine goals after Sam Jarrett, Rohm and Raymus each scored their ninth Tuesday."We've got three solid lines and we take a lot of pride in our depth,"Matt Jarrett said. "That's what wins us games."By contrast, Fox Chapel has only 13 players."We have trouble keeping up with fast teams like this,"Damp said.Seneca Valley had a 27-22 edge in shots.The Raiders return to Warrendale BladeRunners Thursday to face Bethel Park in the next round. Seneca Valley defeated the Black Hawks 4-1 during the regular season.
