State hockey tournament: West gets by Wasilla

Feb. 9, 2007

By MATT TUNSETH/ Frontiersman

WASILLA - A feisty Wasilla Warriors' squad gave heavily favored West Anchorage all it could handle Friday night, but still came out on the wrong end of a 5-2 decision in the first round of the First National Cup Alaska 4A high school hockey championships.

Wasilla held the Eagles in a tight, hard-fought affair until two late goals by West player-of-the-game Chris Ladlow and Tyler Spann enabled the Eagles to finish off the pesky Warriors, the runner-up of the North Star Conference.

&#8220I'm really proud of the way the kids played tonight,” Wasilla head coach Bill Sturdevant said.

The Warriors skated hard in the first period, giving the skilled skaters of West fits with a number of blocked shots that served to counter the Eagles'

creativity.

Wasilla also killed off two power plays in the first despite a number of good West challenges, most notably a shot by Ladrow that rang the crossbar.

In the second period, West had an early goal waved off when it was determined that the whistle had blown after Wasilla goalie Jesse Hugli covered up after a save.

The score remained tied until Wasilla's Carl Brent made a spectacular pass to teammate Herbie Mansavage, who calmly buried a shot over West goalie Channing Hess' shoulder, and gave the home fans a big reason to cheer.

That play was followed immediately by some magic on the part of the Eagles' Nick Merkle, whose nifty feed from behind the net set up the tying goal by Ladrow.

The Eagles went ahead on a goal by Casey Bailey less than three minutes later on a play that the Warriors claimed had been blown dead.

&#8220I think Jesse thought it was frozen,” Sturdevant said.

Their arguments scored no points with the officials, who put West on the power play shortly thereafter.

With a third chance at a man advantage, the Eagles finally cashed in, getting a power-play goal at the 8:09 mark to take a 3-1 lead.

Wasilla became aggravated at that point, picking up a couple silly penalties that led to more and more pressure on the team's defense.

West was not immune to bad penalties, picking up two big ones late in the second period that gave Wasilla a full two minutes of 5-on-3 hockey to play with. Matt Thompson started things off by bloodying the lip of Carl Brent to earn a five-minute major, then Matt Bennett, Tyler Spann and Tucker Dougherty finished the job with penalties of their own.

West was able to kill the last three minutes of the period, however, taking a 3-1 edge into the locker room after two periods of play.

The Eagles got several good saves by Hess during the penalty kill. The West goalie finished with 20 saves on 21 Wasilla shots.

Wasilla cut the lead to 3-2 behind a power-play goal of their own, with just under nine minutes left in the game when Matthew Friese took the feed from brother Adam and put a shot through a screen that Hess never saw to make things much more interesting.

&#8220I thought we were going to tie things up there,” Sturdevant said.

The Eagles got themselves some breathing room courtesy of a Spann with just over four minutes remaining. Span used a linesman as a screen to skate past the Wasilla defense, then put a nasty left-to-right move on Hugli.

Minutes later, Ladrow got his tally on the breakaway to provide the final margin.

After the game, Sturdevant said he believes this game gave his team a reason to look to the future. Wasilla only loses two seniors after this season, and the coach said the tough game against a high-powered foe will help the team build toward next year.

&#8220I think they know they're heading in the right direction,” Sturdevant said.

With the loss, the Warriors move to the consolation side of the bracket and face West Valley at 10:15 a.m. today at the Menard Arena.

West Valley suffered a 5-0 loss to Dimond in its quarterfinal match.

In other first round action, Service slipped by North Star Conference champion Kenai 4-2 in the morning game.

South Anchorage followed with a 7-1 win over

Lathrop.

Now, the Cook Inlet Conference is the only league represented on the winner's side of the bracket. All four Anchorage-based teams snuck out of the first round with wins.

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