Record does not mean the Knights will crumble

Feb. 6, 2007

By MATT TUNSETH/ Frontiersman

&#8220Having nothing, nothing can he lose.”

- William Shakespeare (King Henry the Sixth, Part III)

PALMER - This story does not have a happy ending. The heroes lose, the villains win, and sorrow rules the day. Somehow that's more fitting - sometimes it really is about how the game was played.

After putting up the worst Alaska high school hockey season by any class 4A team in recent memory - 20 games, 20 losses - the Colony Knights skated into Thursday's North Star Conference tournament matchup against Soldotna a broken and belittled bunch. At school and on the ice, the players had been reduced to punch lines, unable to convince anyone who cared that they were more than a bunch of losers.

&#8220They'd been getting a little down, hearing it at school, that kind of thing,” Colony coach Dale Mattson said.

It was a situation that had gone from bad to worse in a hurry as the 2006-07 season began to unfold.

Three days before the season began, the Knights lost junior Blake Huppert - their top returning offensive player - to a shoulder injury. Their best goalie, senior Joe Nyberg, was in just his second year of high school hockey after spending his junior year with the JV squad.

And there were only two seniors on the entire roster, with many of the team's key players underclassmen with little varsity experience.

In their first game of the season, Colony lost 15-2 to West Valley. They followed that up with a 4-0 loss to class 3A Houston.

One by one, the losses piled up.

Mattson kept telling anyone who would listen that the Knights weren't as bad as their record, but it was hard to believe. After all, how much respect can you give a winless hockey team?

There were close calls. In their final regular season game, in fact, Colony nearly knocked off cross-town rival Wasilla, falling 4-3 to the second-ranked team in the conference.

All that adversity began to take its toll. Losing teams often begin to implode, with players, parents and coaches all pointing fingers at each other, trying to place the blame. Colony was no different, and Mattson said he struggled at times to keep his team from completely falling apart.

So going into the conference tournament, very few people outside of the Colony locker room gave the Knights much chance of beating the SoHi Stars, who had easily defeated Colony in their two previous meetings. Nobody, apparently, except the Knights.

Things looked different from the moment the puck dropped Thursday. Instead of the perennial punching bag they'd been all season, Colony came out slugging - both literally and figuratively. Instead of laying back and waiting for the game to come to them, the Knights took the action to the Stars from the start. They outshot SoHi by a stunning 13-4 margin in the first period and displayed a meanness that hadn't been seen all season long.

The Knights, in fact, played like bullies at times, taking every opportunity to give Soldotna players the proverbial &#8220business.” Checking with abandon, the Knights fouled the rhythm of the faster Stars, and turned the contest into an old-school banger. The Stars pleaded with the officials for help, but as most fans know, playoff hockey is decided with the sticks, not the whistles.

By the time SoHi realized what kind of a game it was in for, Colony had posted a 1-0 lead on a goal by Huppert, whose return to the lineup in mid-January had buoyed the Knights' confidence in their game.

Mattson said there was a simple reason for his team's newfound aggressiveness against Soldotna. Instead of worrying about petty differences and previous losses, his team decided to play as a cohesive unit for the first time all season.

&#8220They game together,” he said, Thursday. &#8220Tonight they just put all that other stuff aside.”

Soldotna evened the score in the second period, and used their speedy forwards to continually rush through the neutral zone. But time and again the Colony defenders were up to the challenge, consistently knocking the SoHi players off their stride before they could produce legitimate scoring chances.

When Soldotna was able to get to the net, Nyberg was there, coming up consistently with magical saves - each one sending the packed house at the Palmer Ice Arena leaping to its feet.

Tension mounted as the third period unfolded. Unwilling to let a penalty decide the outcome of the game, the referees swallowed their whistles, refusing to call even a single infraction in the final 15 minutes of play. Instead, the players tried desperately to end things on their own.

But none could, and the game went to overtime.

Had things ended there, Colony would have gotten credit for a game well played. After all, nobody expected them to even come close to the Stars. But the Knights had other ideas.

The first overtime was scoreless, with still no penalties called despite the increasingly physical nature of the contest. At one point, a Colony player muscled a Star completely over the boards and onto the bench - all in plain sight of everyone in the arena. The Stars, for their part, didn't play like altar boys. They were willing to give as good as they got. In fact, Soldotna even managed to get called for a penalty after the first overtime session ended when one of their defensmen cold-cocked Colony's Ryan Weeks in the back of the head after the final horn had sounded.

As they left the ice after the first overtime, cheers rained down on the Colony players from the home fans. Soldotna players, on the other hand, were subjected to taunts, jeers and worse - in keeping with the throwback nature of the game.

Tension continued to mount as the second overtime ticked by. Colony found the net at one point, but had their goal disallowed (rightly) by an offside call that nearly put some fans in tears. Soldotna, too, had their chances, once getting a puck as far as the goal line before it was whisked away by an alert Knights defender.

After two overtimes, the game was tied.

Then eight more minutes of sudden-death hockey, and nothing changed.

Three overtimes, no winning score.

The Zamboni came out for the fourth time. Cell phones rang, with anxious spouses calling to inquire about the whereabouts of their significant others. Sports reporters missed deadlines, teenagers missed curfews and yet nobody could be persuaded to leave.

When Colony skated onto the ice for the fourth overtime, they were greeted by a standing ovation. Here was a team that had failed to win even a single hockey game all season being greeted as genuine heroes. They'd skated their hearts out, sweated and scraped and scratched their way through more than three hours of hockey, and were now what they never could have dreamed they'd become: heroes.

And then everything came to an end.

Soldotna's Alex Stone went top shelf on Nyberg, the horn sounded, and the game was over. The arena went silent, save for the groggy, relieved and euphoric cheers of the Soldotna players and the few SoHi supporters who'd made the four-hour trip from the Peninsula.

And the Knights, losers of their previous 20 games, lost their 21st, and last, game of the season.

But as the beaten, weary Colony players headed for the locker room, they carried their heads high. And in appreciation for what they'd just seen, the fans stood and cheered as loudly as if the Knights had just brought home a championship.

They cheered not for accomplishment, but effort; not for glory, but bravery. They cheered because they'd just seen a group of determined young athletes give everything they had to the sport they love.

&#8220I didn't have to ask them if they played 100 percent tonight,” Mattson said. &#8220They know they did.”

In one final defeat, the Colony Knights finally found a way to win.

Contact Matt Tunseth at 352-2265 or matt.tunseth@frontiersman.com