St Joseph's Prep Hawks

Pine Richland 7 Latrobe 3 VALENCIA – Pine Richland is off to a pretty strong start at 6-0 and ranked # 1 in the Pa Hockey Elite 8 statewide poll. Head coach Bob Kennedy’s club has been virtually unchallenged through the early part of the season with the veteran leadership of top line Senior Phil Trombetta and sophomores George Saad and Dylan Trombetta, who have combined with a nucleus of up and coming younger players to lead the Rams to a perfect start. The question is when talking Class AA hockey, who will challenge Pine Richland and furthermore is there anyone who can knock them off. A decent victims list of perennial AA powers Peters Twp, Thomas Jefferson, West Allegheny and Canevin have been the whipping boys for the Rams as no one has come within three goals of them during the regular season. The rebirth of Latrobe hockey is still a work in progress under Ron Makoski as this team has started off 7-1 with strong performances over West Allegheny, Greensburg Salem, two narrow wins over Franklin Regional and a road victory at the Belmont over Kittanning, with the only blemish coming in a rematch with Salem. The Wildcats have speed, discipline and goaltending, which is a pre-requisite of competing with the Rams that would be put to the test as the current # 2 team in Class AA traveled to the Infection Ice Connection. The key to Wildcat success would be their ability to expose the Ram defense and goaltending, which is easier said than done and contain Saad, Trombetta and Trombetta, which has not been done by anyone. The Rams dominated the territorial play in the early going as the top line of Phil and Dylan Trombetta and George Saad led the assault. PR opened the scoring with 8:00 left in the opening period. Latrobe came on in the middle of the period but was forced to kill off a penalty and capitalized as Isaac Pritchard got behind the Ram defense and beat Stoney Hildreth low to the glove side to tie the score at one apiece with 5:01 remaining. The Wildcats seized the lead in the hockey game as Ryan LaDuke found Michael McCrady on a cross ice pass, who beat Hildreth cleanly on the ice to give Latrobe a 2-1 lead with 2:20 left. On to the second, which has been Richland’s best period all season and this game would be no different as Phil Trombetta got things started just 30 seconds in beating Nick Loyacona with a wicked snapshot high under the crossbar to tie the score at two apiece. The game went back and forth with both teams skating hard and having chances at both ends, but Pine Richland show their lethal hand in the middle period in the final three minutes as Phil Trombetta found George Saad on a noe-timer with 3:01 to go to give the Rams the lead 3-2. The real backbreaker came with just :13 left as Dylan Trombetta skated over the blue line and used the defenseman as a screen and buried a wrist whot over the glove hand of Loyacona to give PR a 4-2 lead. Shots were 26 – 15 thru two periods in favor of Richland. The Wildcats started the third with the power play and then had a 5 on 3 just ten seconds into the period and Latrobe failed to mount an attack not to mention a quality scoring chance and the Rams killed it. Juat as the penalties ended the Wildcats had a costly turnover as freshman Brian Watt raced 120 feet and beat Loyacona on a nice move to extend the Pine Richland lead to 5-2. Just 41 seconds later the freshman Brian Watt scored at 12:01 on another breakaway as Latrobe fell apart and the Rams seized a 6-2 lead. A little over a minute later, Phil Trombetta turned this one in to a rout at 10:49 7-2. Latrobe scored at 8:49 as JeffJoe Regula made it a 7-3 count. Pine Richland cemented their claim to the number one spot in Class AA and is looking for that next challenger to see if anyone will challenge them come March.