What was it that was most impressive about St. Joe’s 8-0 win over St. Francis in Monday night’s private school semifinals? Was it the eight goals scored? The fact that seven different Marauders scored those eight goals? Or maybe that the St. Joe’s defense allowed just four shots on goal?
St. Joe’s defenseman and captain August Cudeck was thrilled at having allowed just four shots. Danny Mikolajczak stopped three of them and Tim Zatkos played the third period and stopped the one shot he faced.
“Four shots is, that’s incomparable,” Cudeck said. “It’s like getting a no-hitter in baseball; it’s awesome. So anytime that happens, it’s a great game, and we want to keep that rolling. We’ve been doing that pretty much the whole season. We want to keep all the teams to single digits, and it’s happened a lot.”
St. Joe’s was the top seed for the private school playoffs while St. Francis was the No. 4 seed. The Marauders worked hard in the practices leading up to their first playoff game of the season, and they continued to work hard in Monday’s game.
“Starts with a great week of practice, so we had four days leading up to it,” Cudeck said. “And we had a set practice plan, so we went hard every day, practiced a little bit of everything, some forward and some D stuff, broke up power play/penalty kill, and we were ready.”
“Prior practice, had a hard week of practice, working on different things to do in the offensive zone, and it ended up paying off for us tonight,” said Nash Braun, who scored twice Monday night.
“We just kinda focused on working hard,” St. Joe’s coach Rich Crozier said. “We felt like we were in a position that we could outwork them, and I liked our skating tonight. I thought we did a nice job of winning battles and getting pucks to the net. The things that we’ve done well all season, I feel like we did well tonight. That was the difference.”
Braun scored his first goal of the game less than three minutes into the first period to give St. Joe’s a 1-0 lead.
“Jordan Weigand made a great play behind the net, off the boards, and just fed it out in front, and then I just turned and fired it as quick as I could,” Braun said.
Trevor Conschafter added to the lead with a power play goal less than a minute and a half later as he buried a Cudeck rebound.
“I’m kinda like secondary unit for power play, so I don’t get out there all the time,” the captain explained. “But we got out there, and I think it went from Wahler to me, and I put it down low, and their forward that was covering me got sucked in, and so Griff LoVullo, who got the secondary on it, fired it back up, and I just kinda turned and took a quick shot. I don’t know if I was expecting to put it in; I was just trying to get it somewhere where somebody could get a rebound, and Conschafter’s great at that, so he puts it home.”
Brad Herlan scored late in the first, and St. Joe’s took a 3-0 lead into the second period.
It was then that St. Francis goaltender Dylan McDonald turned into something resembling a brick wall. He almost singlehandedly killed a St. Francis penalty in the second, stopped shot after shot, and didn’t allow a puck into the net for the entire second period.
But in the third, St. Joe’s broke through. The Marauders outworked the Red Raiders, just as they’d hoped, and the tired St. Francis team could only do so much to stop a deep St. Joe’s team.
“The system that we have is we always just keep on grinding it out and working them low as much as we possibly can,” Braun said. “By doing that, it always ends up playing out that by the third period that they don’t want to touch the puck, and we take advantage of it.”
Spencer Frome, Jack Lalley, Mike Greco, and Nate Berke scored in the third before Braun capped off the win with his second of the game with just 25 seconds left.
“Seth [Glanowski] made a great play from the point, got a nice little hard shot, and I was able to just get my stick on it and hammer in the rebound,” Braun said.
He was happy to see that the hard work he and his teammates had put in during practices carried into the game.
“It was great,” Braun said. “Prior to, we had a good practice. Our offensive units were really working together, really flowing and putting the puck home in practice yesterday, so it’s awesome to have it work out for us in the game.”
Despite the lopsided score, Crozier admired the effort of St. Francis, especially McDonald, and said the game had a playoff atmosphere for both sides.
“I like the way we played,” Crozier said. “At three, four-nothing, I think they realized that their season’s ending, and we’re amped up, excited. That’s maybe why the score got a little bit lopsided. Their goalie played really well, their kids competed, and I gave them a lot of credit, so I don’t think the score was really that reflective of the game … This was a semifinal game with the winner going down to the arena, and it had all the feel of that for us.”
Like Cudeck, Braun was most impressed by the team’s defense on Monday night, and he hopes it carries into this coming Monday’s private school championship game against Canisius.
“I really liked our defensive play,” Braun said. “We limited them to not a lot of shots. We just gotta keep on going, working on our systems, and staying disciplined, primarily.”
Both Braun and Cudeck are seniors, and Cudeck was inspired by one of last year’s seniors before the semifinal game. Cudeck won’t soon forget the words of last year’s captain.
“I was talking to Justin Crawford, who helps out, and he was a captain last year,” Cudeck said. “He came up to me before the game and said, ‘Play every game like it’s your last ’cause it could be,’ and you take that to heart. And we do it for the guys last year that we couldn’t get it done for, so it means a lot making it there again, and we’re gonna be ready to go.”
“We’re gonna have to be at our best if we want to be champion,” Crozier said. “That’s what it’s all about. We’re thrilled to get the opportunity to be back, and we’re hopeful that we can put together another great performance like tonight. That’s what it will take to be a champion. Whether it’s Canisius or Timon, we’re definitely gonna have to be at our best to win next Monday, so that’s what we’re gonna focus on. We’ll have a really hard week of practice, a lot of preparation, and my expectation is that it’ll be a great game.”
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