Brighton Completes Impressive Repeat

March 10, 2018

Second Half reports

PLYMOUTH — Harrison Fleming pictured himself in this moment, throwing his gloves in the air as the final buzzer sounded, getting mobbed by teammates in a wild celebration on the ice at USA Hockey Arena.

He envisioned this even when his status on Brighton’s hockey team rarely had him in the crease on game nights.

“Honestly, I kind of did,” Fleming said. “I told myself I wanted that. I didn’t want to ride the bench any more. So, I did whatever I could to start. I’m just glad it came out that way. Hard work pays off.”

It paid off for Fleming and his Brighton teammates in the form of a fourth MHSAA Division 1 championship in the past seven seasons. The Bulldogs repeated as Division 1 champs with a 5-2 victory over Saginaw Heritage Saturday night.

Fleming started only two of Brighton’s first 16 games until starter Robert Pegrum, last year’s varsity backup, got injured. Fleming, the junior varsity goalie last season, played well enough to earn the No. 1 spot for the playoffs, even when Pegrum returned.

Fleming allowed more than two goals only once in 13 starts, a statistic that is even more impressive considering nine of those starts were against state-ranked teams.

The 6-foot-2 junior turned aside 21 of 22 shots in a 2-1 victory over top-ranked Detroit Catholic Central in the Semifinals before stopping 23 of 25 shots against seventh-ranked Heritage.

“It’s unreal, but I couldn’t have done it without all them,” Fleming said of his teammates. “They played their butts off for me. That’s all I can ask for. Great outcome.”

Fleming went 6-0 in the playoffs with a 1.20 goals-against average and a .944 save percentage.

Fleming’s first big start of the season came Jan. 30 against Hartland. The Bulldogs lost, 2-1, but he played well enough to open the eyes of the coaching staff.

That Hartland team, which is Brighton’s biggest rival in Livingston County, won the Division 2 championship eight hours earlier. The quality of hockey in the county is a source of pride.

“I played with a lot of people on the Hartland team,” Brighton defenseman Brody White said. “Jake Gallaher, (Josh) Albring. I’m happy for them, just as happy as for us.”

“I’ve got a lot of friends on that team,” Brighton defenseman Sam Brennan said.

White and Brennan are rare four-year varsity players, coming in together as freshmen in 2014-15 and leaving together with two MHSAA championships and a runner-up finish as sophomores.

“It’s amazing,” White said. “I wouldn’t want to do it with anyone else, that’s for sure. It’s definitely been the best four years of my hockey career.”

Heritage did its best to dispel the notion that the Semifinal game between perennial powers Brighton and Catholic Central was the de facto championship game. After surviving a 3-2 overtime Semifinal against Traverse City West, the Hawks had plenty in the tank to push Brighton for the full 51 minutes.

“It went down right to the end,” Heritage coach J.J. Bamberger said. “After the game, for a few minutes, I reflected. For anyone who said it was a shame Brighton and C.C. weren’t playing in the championship game, I hope they watched what our boys did, because our boys played their hearts out and were in that game the entire time.”

The Hawks (22-5-3) were only the second team from Saginaw to reach an MHSAA Final. Saginaw Nouvel lost 6-0 to Grosse Pointe Woods University Liggett in the 1990 Class B-C-D title game.

It was a one-goal game until Evan MacDonald poked the puck into the net while breaking up a pass in front of the Heritage goal with 5:07 left in the third period.

“He was coming up the middle,” MacDonald said. “He was going to make a pass to the guy on the stretch side. I just put my stick down and it ended up bouncing in.”

Will Jentz put his second goal of the game into an empty net with 57.7 seconds left.

“They’re a quality team,” Brighton senior Adam Conquest said of the Hawks. “We were not expecting it. We knew they had skill. We knew they could score. They had us the first two periods, but we pulled it out. It was a really good hockey game. I give them all the credit in the world.”

Brighton (24-6-1) jumped out to a 2-0 lead by the 12:22 mark of the first period on goals by Mathew Kahra and Jentz. Heritage cut the deficit to one goal on a power-play goal by David Helpap with 2:47 remaining in the period.

Following a scoreless second period, freshman Nate Przysiecki temporarily gave Brighton some breathing room by scoring with 15:49 left in the third. The Hawks kept pushing, getting back within a goal on John Michael Watson’s power-play score with 12:27 left.

Click for the full box score.

PHOTOS: (Top) Brighton players celebrate their second straight Division 1 title. (Middle) Brighton and Heritage players work for position in front of the Hawks’ net. 

Hockey Team Becomes Romeo's Next Champ

March 12, 2016

By Bill Khan
Special for Second Half

PLYMOUTH — The students in the large Romeo cheering section might have been nervous. 

Some of his teammates might have been getting nervous too.

Nolan Kare, however, couldn't allow himself to give in to the natural human reaction as the MHSAA Division 2 hockey championship appeared to be slipping away from the Bulldogs' grasp. 

After scoring three straight goals during a frantic 5:02 stretch of the second period, a seasoned Livonia Stevenson squad held a 4-2 lead over a Romeo team that had never played on the biggest stage in Michigan high school hockey.

Kare stopped the last 11 shots he faced over the final 22 minutes and 21 seconds, backstopping Romeo to a 6-4 come-from-behind victory over Stevenson on Saturday at USA Hockey Arena. 

"I know we kind of let up a little bit, but our team has so much heart," Kare said. "I know that if I just make the saves I'm supposed to make and try to rob a few that our team is going to give us the best chance to win. I know if I'm doing that, then I'm going to give them the best opportunity to put us in a position to get back."

Senior star Logan Jenuwine's tip-in goal during a five-minute power play with 10:21 left in the game snapped a 4-4 tie. Steven Morris scored an empty-net goal with 29.1 seconds left to seal the first MHSAA hockey title in the 15-year history of the Romeo program.

Suddenly, a school that had no MHSAA team championships going into the 2014-15 school year has three over the past 16 months. It began with the volleyball team winning the 2014 Class A championship and continued when the football team upset Detroit Cass Tech in the 2015 Division 1 title game at Ford Field. 

"Before the game, we were saying if the football team could beat Cass Tech with 20 Division I (college) players coming up, we could beat Livonia Stevenson," Romeo senior forward Nick Blankenburg said. "Shocking the world and being part of such a great team feels incredible. To win a state championship for our school, to get those rings like our football team and volleyball team, I'll remember this my entire life." 

Like the football and volleyball teams, the hockey team benefitted from a huge outpouring of support in a matchup that was witnessed by two passionate and energized fan bases.

"There's just something special about Romeo," said Kare, who finished with 29 saves and led the state with all 27 of Romeo's victories. "It's a small-town feel. You could see it out there. The entire town's out there for us. Just like football, just like volleyball, we had the whole community behind our back. We're just unbelievably blessed to have the best fan base, the best family, the best support out of anybody."

The atmosphere in which the Romeo and Stevenson players competed is one of the things that sets high school hockey apart from its competitors. Senior forward Ben Kowalske, who played in three MHSAA Finals for the Spartans, said neighbors will stop him and congratulate him on how the team is performing. Kowalske is the lone holdover from Stevenson's 2013 MHSAA Division 2 championship team and is a member of the MHSAA's Student Advisory Council. 

"Being on the Council, you learn ideas and what other schools do," Kowalske said. "It's really amazing people are so interested in what we're doing. To have everyone come out to the game really means the world and really means a lot to us that we're doing something right here. You saw Romeo, too. They had the city support. It's cool. You try not to let it distract you during the game, but now that it's over, it's cool. It wasn't the outcome we wanted, but we did the best we could. It's really cool the community could come together over something and just forget about the world for a couple hours and just have fun."

A defensive battle that was tied 1-1 for the first 23 minutes changed in a hurry as the second period neared its midway point. 

Romeo (27-2-1) grabbed a 2-1 lead at 6:18 of the second period on a goal by Jenuwine, but that only served to wake up the Spartans.

As Jenuwine's goal was being announced, Nick Beers scored the equalizer for the Spartans just 19 seconds later. Stevenson took its first lead 44 seconds later on a goal by Shane Leonard. Riding the crest of that momentum, the Spartans built their lead to 4-2 at the 11:39 mark on a goal by Nate Sudek. 

With the game possibly slipping away, Romeo coach Nick Badder called what proved to be a critical timeout.

"We were down, they had all the momentum," Badder said. "I was telling (Adam) Krefski and the other assistants, 'Right now, they have all the momentum. We're on our heels, and we felt it. We calmed down the boys. Once they calmed down and realized it was shift by shift, we kind of took over." 

Romeo got right back into the game before the second period ended, getting within 4-3 on Brett Lanski's second goal of the game with 2:34 left in the period and tying it when Luke Kaczor tipped in a shot from the point by Logan Ganfield with 1:30 to go in the period. Between the teams, six goals were scored during a 9:13 span.

Romeo was presented with a golden opportunity to break the tie when a Stevenson player received a five-minute major and game disqualification at 4:38 of the third period. 

A power play that featured the highest-scoring player in the state wasn't going to miss over the course of five minutes. Jenuwine, who had 46 goals and 50 assists this season, scored what proved to be the game-winner at the 5:39 mark when he redirected a shot from the right point by Ganfield.

"It was going wide," said Jenuwine, who had two goals and three assists. "That's what I've been trying to work on mostly is get to the front of the net. I'm not really a guy to get to the front of the net; I did. It was a good shot by Logan Ganfield, and I got a tip on it." 

Stevenson coach David Mitchell didn't blame the penalty for the loss.

"To say it turned there, it turned because they capitalized," Mitchell said. "They still had to capitalize, so you give them credit for capitalizing. We still had multiple chances to score and they had multiple chances to score. As a coach, it's so tough to explain to a bunch of 15-, 16-, 17-year-old kids that it's not one moment, it's an entire game. There were 51 minutes that were played out there where multiple other things happened." 

Stevenson (22-7-1) had three offensive-zone face-offs in the final 1:25, but couldn't generate a scoring threat.

There might have been another had Morris' shot from inside his own blue line missed the target, but he found the center of the net for the game-clinching empty-netter with 29.1 seconds to go. For good measure, Morris blocked a shot in the final seconds. 

Before Saturday, the Bulldogs' only playoff run beyond the Regionals came last season when they lost 8-2 to Grosse Pointe South in the MHSAA Quarterfinals.

"Last year's loss in the playoffs hurt," Badder said. "Grosse Pointe South took it to us; they kind of owned us. We didn't have a playoff game plan; we didn't have a playoff style last year. This year, I was so hard on these guys. We lost two games, and I was still, 'Guys, we're not doing this right, we're not doing that right.' They're like, 'Coach, we just won 6-1.' I was trying to get a point across to them that you've got to be a playoff team. You have to hit. You've got to block shots. You've got to get the puck in your own end. It's not the high-flying (Blankenburg) and (Jenuwine) show. We're a team, and the team will win in the end." 

Click for the full box score.

PHOTOS: (Top) Romeo players raise their first MHSAA championship trophy to the crowd after Saturday’s Division 2 Final. (Middle) Romeo’s Steven Morris (36) and Stevenson’s Sam Judd work to gain possession of the puck. (Click for more from Andrew Knapik.)