The best of both hockey worlds

JEREMIAH BARTZ/ Sports Editor

WASILLA -- The Houston Hawks are not your average 3A hockey team in the state of Alaska. With a virtual dominance at the small school level in the last several seasons and many, many wins over large school squads, 4A opponents can never look at their schedule and put an instant check in the win column. Even the top team at the 4A level.

The Dimond Lynx understand that.

On paper it looks like Dimond, the top ranked team in the state according to the Anchorage Daily News/Coaches Poll, breezed past the Hawks -- outshooting Houston in 53-26 in a 4-1 victory -- but the Lynx didn't just skate away with an easy win.

"They had to earn it," Houston senior Wade Williams said.

Houston played physical despite being undermanned and undersized and used a defensive scheme that didn't allow Dimond many easy goal scoring opportunities.

"The first shift of the game, I took a pass and they hit me right in the chops," Dimond captain Arena Krogh said. "I didn't expect that."

On that first shift, Houston junior forward Larry Kincaid saw the puck being moved to Krogh and took the Dimond blueliner off his feet.

"I didn't expect that," Krogh said. "We knew they were a good team; we didn't take them lightly at all. We tried to get a good start, but didn't think we got a good start."

Dimond freshman William Rapuzzi put Dimond on the board early in the first period, slipping the puck through the five-hole of Hawk goaltender Paul Sutton-Jones after he was able to slide inside of the Houston defensive scheme. On each of its scores, Dimond was able to slip through that scheme and take advantage of matchups in the middle. And when the Hawks kept the fast and physical Lynx off the doorstep, Sutton-Jones stopped everything.

"Every shot he saw he stopped," Williams said. "Paul played huge."

"They probably had 20 shots from the dots," Houston head coach Jamie Smith said. "That's what we tried to force them into doing. (Paul) can stop anything out there."

Krogh gave Dimond a 2-0 lead slapping in a rebound of a Tyler Currier shot. Currier served the initial blast from the bottom half of the right circle and Williams dropped down to block the puck in front of Sutton-Jones. Williams stopped the shot, but the puck slipped out while he was right in front of Sutton-Jones and Krogh skated in hard to slap in the rebound. Logan Imlach gave Dimond a 3-0 lead with a shot of the underside of the crossbar and Jason Stralka muscled in a score right in front of the net for Dimond's fourth tally.

"When they came down the lane, we were in trouble. They just have too much power," Smith said.

Williams set up Houston's lone score -- a Rick Morlock tally -- with a patient play and a perfect pass. On the shift following Dimond's third score, Williams picked up the puck in transition and raced up the ice to create a 2-on-1. While everyone in a Dimond uniform most likely thought the quick-shooting Williams was going to fire the puck, Williams slid around a diving defensman and eased the puck across the ice to Morlock who waited at the doorstep. With a quick move, Morlock put the puck past Dimond netminder John Forbes.

"I knew the defenseman was going to slow up and maybe lay down, like they did," Williams said. "I knew no one would be on Rick because it was a 2-on-1."

Houston had more scoring opportunities than its 27 shots might suggest. The problem for the Hawks was their best opportunities didn't even hit the crease or even the goalies pads. The Hawks slid shots to the outside right of the post, the outside left and hit the pipe. The Hawks lifted shots, popped pucks in the air and a bevy of large Lynx blueliners built a sturdy wall around the Dimond goal.

"Playing 3A the bigger kids usually don't skate that well," Williams said. "These guys, they're big and they know how to skate. We got to step up to that."

Houston skated with a 5-on-3 advantage, thanks to a pair of Dimond penalties, for the final 91 seconds in the the game.

"We had two primo opportunities," Smith said. "But that's the way the game is, it gets so much faster -- we got to bury'em. You can't take but half a second to catch the puck and bury it in the net."

Running just two lines and four defenseman, as opposed to Dimond's four lines and six blueliners, Houston wore itself out in the long run, Smith said.

"They wore us down, they got the better end of it," Smith said.

Smith, also Houston's activities director, purposely schedules as many 4A opponents in the early portion of the season as possible. The Hawks are 5-2-1 in eight games against large school squads. Houston has already scored wins over two Anchorage schools, Bartlett and the three-time defending state champion Service Cougars, and are 2-0-1 against the three 4A teams from the Mat-Su area.