St Joseph's Prep Hawks

Bethel Park 2 Mt Lebanon 0 Bethel Park – A Who’s Who night with Bobby Montana, Bob ‘Dr Denton’ Behling, King Tut Bob Sebastian, John McKelvey, Lebo legendary coach Mickey McDermott, members of the Championship Blue Devils Matt Vaughn & Josh Mandic, Jack Bleik, Dave ‘the Milk Man’ Dorsey, Jamie Cummings among the notables of the always entertaining Mt Lebanon – Bethel Park rivalry, that is slated as a doubleheader for tonight and next Monday at the Mt Lebanon Rec Center, which is a great way to showcase two of the areas top programs, who both admittedly would rather have the dates spread out with two months in between, so the league with their wit and quick thinking moved the game up from 8:20 PM to 7:00 PM to extend the distance between games. Bethel Park is off to a terrific start this season at 10-0-0 on the regular season and is ranked # 1 in Class AAA in the Western Pa Hockey Elite 8. Head Coach Jim McVay’s club has yielded just nine goals in their opening ten games and appears to be a cut above the Class AAA competition for this year’s Penguins Cup. The Hawks have wins over Meadville, North Allegheny and Central Catholic during the regular season and have defending State Champions Mt Lebanon in between them and an undefeated campaign. Mt Lebanon surely misses their departed class from a year ago and maybe what coach Paul Taibi really would like to happen is for his team to pick up the scoring pace because the Blue Devils have played solid defense in front of very consistent goaltending through the first half of the season only yielding 14 goals. Lebo still struggles in the big games scoring as evidenced by the Central Catholic and McDowell losses and a narrow win over North Allegheny. The Blue Devils are a team that could mature into a playoff contender by season’s end and remain one of the top 5 Class AAA schools going into the season’s second half. A typical Lebo – Bethel game took a familiar tone in the opening period with Defense being the theme early on. At 8:39, Kenny Lehman picked up a third rebound attempt and deposited it to the stick side of Robbie Behling to give the Hawks a 1-0 lead. At 5:03, Bethel went on the power play with an opportunity to up their lead to two but the Blue Devils stiffened. The shots in the opening period were 12-8 in favor of BP. Bethel went back on the power play with 7:28 to go in the second period and although they did not score continued to press the attack and forechecking on Mt Lebanon. The Hawks continued to frustrate Lebo efforts to clear their own zone and get pressure in the Bethel zone. When Bethel’s apparent 2nd goal was waived off at 2:49 of the second period, many wondered if that just wasn’t the break Lebo would need to change the momentum of the hockey games. On to the third period we went and while Mt Lebanon did get the puck in the Bethel zone, the scoring chances were few and far between. Bethel continued to press the attack on Mt Lebanon, almost daring the Blue Devils to mount some sort of attack. The dagger in the Mt Lebanon faithful’s heart came with 6:06 remaining in regulation time as Tyler Trocano’s shot from a weird angle bounced off Robbie Behling’s shoulder and somehow snuck into the net giving Bethel a huge insurance tally and more importantly a 2-0 lead. BP was able to keep the threat of Mt Lebanon scoring to a minimum and shut them down the rest of the way for a 2-0 victory at Bethel BladeRunners. Stay Tuned for the re-matchup less than 72 hours away at the Mt Lebanon Rec Center.