The Morning Journal (Lorain, OH)
Comets win Baron Cup II
Amherst defeats SWC rival Avon Lake for third straight title
No matter the tournament in recent years, the Amherst hockey team has had all the answers.
And now the Comets can add another Baron Cup II to their trophy case.
Back in January, they won their third consecutive Southwestern
Conference championship thanks to a dominant effort against Avon Lake.
On Feb. 16, once again against the Shoremen, the
Comets (24-4) took an early lead and held on for a 4-2 win in the Baron Cup II final at the John M. Coyne Recreation Center in Brooklyn, also their third in a row.
“It’s an amazing feeling,” said Comets senior Jacob Kramer, who finished with a hat trick and added an assist. “Not too many teams are able to (threepeat), and all these guys work really hard and work their butts off the whole season, and I’m just really proud of what the team did.”
On the way to his team’s 10th straight victory, Kramer scored twice in the first period and again during a crucial power play in the second, capping an explosive tournament showing in which he notched 17 points (13 goals, four assists) in three games.
He opened the scoring with 8:37 left in the first period, then his wrister from between the circles with 7:29 left squirted under the pads of Shoremen (25-8-1) goalie Dillon Aslaksen for a 2-0 lead. Nick Ospelt cut it to 2-1 with less than three minutes remaining with a wrap-around goal to the left of Comets goalie Brady Grove, but Nick Ciura answered less than a minute later to make it 3-1.
Avon Lake came out determined in the second period and appeared to be shifting the game’s momentum when Luke Farthing scored on a shot from inside the right face off circle with 9:32 remaining, but 66 seconds later Kramer scored on a power play that resulted from an Avon Lake slashing call, pushing the margin back to two goals, 4-2.
“It’s the focus that we work on, and the discipline we preach,” Comets coach Steve Morris said of his team’s quick responses. “It doesn’t really matter if you’re down by one or up by two, you try and stay as focused and as tightened and just do what we can do. …
If they score, we come back and work a little harder.”
The Shoremen were whistled for three penalties in the second period alone, though they were able to kill two of Amherst’s three power plays.
“We came out in the second and scored the first goal, which you want to do, of course,” Shoremen coach Steve Burns said. “You’ve got everything going your way at that moment, you’re playing well, and then bang, bang, bang (with the penalties), and it messes up the lines, messes up the flow, and the last thing we need is one less guy on the ice defending.”
In the third, the Comets elected to nurse their twogoal lead by playing a hockey equivalent of a prevent defense, drifting back into a 1-3-1 alignment and forcing the Shoremen to try and skate through. The result was their fourth victory over the Shoremen this season.
“(Avon Lake’s) got a couple players that can really shoot the puck, so we knew it was going to be a hard game,” Kramer said. “We knew we just had to go all-out, because for us this is kind of our season. The Baron Cup is our big tournament, so we knew we had to lay it all on the line.”
Aslaksen made 42 saves for Avon Lake in a standout effort. Grove finished with 22.
“I thought they played great. I thought both teams played great,” Burns said. “Four-two, that’s a fun championship game.”
The state tournament looms for both teams. Seeded fifth in the Brooklyn bracket, Amherst will face No. 17 Westlake Feb. 22 at 5 p.m., while seventh seed Avon Lake will face eighth seed Padua Feb. 23 at 7:30 p.m. All games will be played at the John M. Coyne Recreation Center.