St Joseph's Prep Hawks

2006 Penguins Cup A Final – Quaker Valley 6 Serra Catholic 0 PITTSBURGH – Serra Catholic (21-2-1) and Quaker Valley (23-1-0) square off in the 2006 Penguins Cup Class A at Mellon Arena with the right to meet Flyers Cup Class A champions, the winner of the Springfield and defending Pennsylvania Class A champions Penncrest. For the Eagles, the Penguins Cup is old hat as Serra has been to the Penguins Cup finals each of the past six seasons, winning four of those and also going on to capture three consecutive State Championships in 2000, 2001 and 2002. The great thing for Quaker Valley is that none of those are in recent memory and the Eagles have struggled to get the job done the past three seasons. The teams met twice during the regular season and split as Serra won the first contest at Rostraver 6-2, handing the Quakers their only loss of the season and QV came back in February and captured the # 1 seed with a 6-3 win at the Airport Ice Arena. After Nick Koroly’s 36 save shutout performance against Bishop McCort in the semi-finals, conventional wisdom would have led George Ellis and Serra to start him in the Penguins Cup and the Eagles started Jeffrey Smaracheck instead maybe to give the QV a different look. Quaker Valley could be playing for another reason as former Quaker Adam Kostial, brother of Aaron Kostial, passed away earlier this season, leaving heavy hearts for a close knit family of hockey people rallied to make this a special season for coach Kevin Quinn’s squad. At 7:24 of the opening period, the Quakers struck as Tim Hall showed cat like quickness and got to the puck before the Serra defense and Smaracheck to give QV a 1-0 lead. The Eagles dug a hole putting QV on the power play at 6:12, which was nullified a minute later as QV took a coach’s nightmare offensive zone interference call at 5:10. The line of George Jackson, Mikail Lemieux and Breton McNamara has carried the workload for QV all season and McNamara made a great play to sidestep the Serra and beat the Serra goaltender on the stick side at 2:27 to give the Quakers a 2-0 lead. With 55 seconds remaining in the opening period, Mikail Lemieux set up McNamara on a one timer to give QV a 3-0 lead. The second period started with QV on the power play and an inadvertent whistle almost cost QV their 4th goal, but at 13:48 Shawn Ritchey slid a perfect pass to Furman South who buried a snapshot down on the ice to give the Quakers a 4-0 lead. A great play by the QV leader Furman South at 5:42 to give and chip the puck over to wide open brother freshman Colin South, who scored on his own rebound to give QV a 5-0 lead. Koroly finally entered the game at this point, but maybe too little too late for Serra. The third period started and with a 5-0 lead, Quaker Valley was counting the minutes to advance to their first ever State Championship game on April 8th at RMU Island Sports Center and the Eagles looked like a defeated and frustrated team. And with 5:20 to go the road got a little more defined as Mikail Lemieux added some salt to the wound and he beat Koroly to make the count 6-0. The final shots in the game were 32-16 and impressive 6-0 win for Quaker Valley and a date in the State Championship against defending Penncrest, a 1-0 winner over Springfield in the Flyers Cup.