Power outage
PITTSBURGH— Opportunity knocked, but Mars couldn't answer.
The Planets failed to score on a penalty shot and all seven of their power play chances, including twice with a two-man advantage, in suffering a 3-1 loss to Quaker Valley in the Penguins Cup Class Achampionship game Wednesday night at Mellon Arena.
The loss snapped a nine-game winning streak for the Planets (22-2-1). Both of their losses came at the hands of the Quakers (23-2-0), who will take a 17-game win streak into the state championship game March 29 at the War Memorial in Johnstown.
Quaker Valley's victory avenged a 4-1 loss to Freeport in last year's Penguins Cup title game.
"Our kids kept bringing that loss up throughout the offseason," Quaker Valley coach Kevin Quinn said. "They know the feeling of standing on the ice wearing the home sweater, watching someone else being handed the Cup.
"It's not very fun."
<table width="300" height="275" border="0" align="right" valign="top" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0"><tr><td><embed src="/assets/mov/BE41753320.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>Mars got the first break of the game less than three minutes into the contest. Quaker Valley gave away the puck at the blue line while on a power play and the Planets' Ian Finney had a clean breakaway on Quakers goalie Zack Taylor.Before Finney could release his shot, he was dragged down by defenseman Cody Scott and was awarded a penalty shot.Finney tried backhanding the puck into the net on Taylor's stick side, but the Quaker Valley goalie stopped him. It was the first penalty shot of the season for Mars and the first of Finney's career."That (backhand) is the move I usually make in shootouts,"Finney said. "It usually works. Tonight, it didn't."Mars coach Tim Coleman said Finney is his team's best one-on-one player."I felty good about Ian being the guy getting the shot," he said. "I figured we had a goal."The Planets scored the first goal of the game with 12:55 left in the second period when Michael Heltman netted his 33rd score of the season and his third in as many playoff games.Quaker Valley had just killed a penalty when Heltman took possession of the puck along the boards, skated into the high slot and let a wrist shot go.The puck deflected off a Quaker defenseman and into the net."That's how most goals are scored in playoff hockey,"Quinn said. "They go in off a body or on some kind of weird bounce."Sean Roach and Brady Sipe assisted on Heltman's goal.
The Planets had chances to extend their lead with the man advantage, but generated few shots on three second-period power plays, including a two-man advantage for 47 seconds.Quaker Valley tied the game with 2:53 left in the period when two Quakers stormed the net and Colin South was able to chip the puck off goaltender Greg Lewis' blocker and into the net.The most bizarre goal of the night occurred just before the horn sounded to end the period.The puck was deflected high in the air in front of the Mars net. While Lewis was trying to locate the puck, it landed between his skates in the goal crease. South tapped it into the net less than a second before the horn.The officials called upstairs and confirmed the goal on replay before allowing it."I didn't know they were allowed to use replay in PIHLgames,"Coleman said. "I guess they can. If it went in, it went in.""I never even saw the puck go up in the air," Lewis said. "By the time I saw it, it was between my legs and (South) had a stick on it."South completed the hat trick — his third three-goal game in as many playoff contests this year — by beating Lewis with a high wrist shot from the slot for a power-play goal late in the third period.South has 33 goals on the season."We're not even playing in this game without Colin South,"Quinn said. "He's a Division I hockey talent."Mars failed to score on three more power plays in the third period, including a two-man advantage for 1:51 while still trailing by a goal.Quaker Valley's Robert Karvinen took an unsportsmanlike conduct penalty with 1:40 left and Coleman pulled goalie Lewis for another two-man advantage, but Mars still couldn't score."We were rushing too much on the power play. We didn't control the puck and set things up,"Coleman said. "I thought about using our timeout to settle that down, but I didn't want to use it too early."Finney agreed that the Planets "just needed to calm down.""We couldn't set up our power play very well," he said. "They were aggressive in coming out after us."Quinn said the Quakers spent 40 minutes on their penalty kill during each of their last three practices."Killing penalties is all about limiting chances,"the coach said. "Our defensemen and forwards did a great job of that."Quaker Valley was 1-for-4 on its power play and had a 28-21 edge in shots on goal for the game.Wednesday's game ended the prep hockey careers of seniors Finney, Heltman, Michael Gascione, Justin Wingert, Jake Takach and Roach."This was the best hockey team I've been associated with, and that's saying something, because I've been in this game for a lot of years,"Coleman said.
