Special teams hamper Lake in loss to St. Edward

Special teams can be a dear friend or a formidable foe, depending on the circumstances.

For Lake Catholic in a Cleveland Cup quarter final Feb. 10, it made its foe — St. Edward — that much more formidable, and the Eagles don’t need much help in that sense.

St. Edward scored twice on the power play late in the opening period, and Lake was hampered by penalties at key junctures of a 4-0 loss at Iceland USA in Strongsville.

“We don’t have the deepest of benches. So we’re using the same guys over and over when we have to kill off three penalties in the first period,” Lake coach Justin Vance sa id. “Ultimately, it falls on us. It falls on our effort. We still have to score goals. The refs don’t dictate the game. The players do.

“And when we’ve gotten penalties, we’ve had our fair share of success on the power play. When we get calls against us, we have to be better on the penalty kill. You wish those kind of things happen later on in a game when you’ve established some rhythm so you’re not burning your legs in the first period, but that’s the way it went, and kudos to Ed’s for scoring on those opportunities.”

At the 11:52 mark of the first period, with the Eagles on t he man advantage courtesy of a roughing penalty, Jason Steckle did nicely with a wrister from the top of the crease.

Just 25 seconds later, Lake went back on t he penalty kill after a roughing penalt y. Steckle dug a puck out from the back boards and fed for Jordan Hoy at the lef t circle, and the senior made no mistake shelving a wrister for a 2- 0 lead.

The Cougars killed off the first of their trio of penalties, but having to go in the box three times in a 3:58 span made the sledding tough for the rest of the game.

St. Edward blew it open in the second period, getting a Curtis Szelesta tally at :33 on a screened wrister and a quality Hoy redirect at 13:26 off an initial wrister by Brad Budoi from the top of the zone.

In stark contrast, Lake had three shots in the second — at 6:04, 8:13 and 14:01 — and could not consistently generate as much as it needed going into the offensive zone.

One silver lining for the Cougars is the fact, in the teams’ two Great Lakes Hockey League meetings, Lake lost by a combined score of 18-2— two 9-1 setbacks. So playing the Eagles within 4-0, with special teams playing a pivot al role, yielded some semblance of encouragement.

“I think we’ re a lot better team than we were early in the year,” Vance said. “I don’t know if anyone knows that, because they see scores in the paper and stuff like that. This is a completely different team. Like I’ve said before, we’ve had some really young guys who are now very comfortable in the roles they’ re playing. And I think the two 9-1 games were just, they saw some of their worst games of the year.

“I thought this was a lot more indicative of how we’re able to play. We’ve just got to find some ways to bury some pucks.”