Archbishop Ryan Raiders

HARMARVILLE – A standing room only crowd at Harmarville turned out Thursday night as one of Western Pa’s best rivalries commenced for the second time this season as a rematch of a 4-2 Fox Chapel victory in November. A lot has changed since November as both teams have matured into playoff contenders, so this would be a big test for both teams. A moment of silence for Mr. Rogers, a Pittsburgh icon, who did his best work next door to the Central campus at WQED for many years, was held with class as the well mannered Fox Chapel and Central Catholic student sections respectfully waited for the national anthem on the state of the art BladeRunners sound system. Head coaches Kevin Zielmanski [CC] and Keith Kearney [FC] were looking forward to this meeting as both teams are preparing for the upcoming playoffs. A playoff atmosphere led to a quiet first period as both teams played very defensive. With 2:31 remaining, Conner Hickton chipped a puck behind the Foxes, like a downhill chip on Oakmont CC’s fast greens, which speedy linemate Joe Coulter was able to corral and backhand past Todd Hendry to the far side and give the Vikings a 1-0 lead. Central held an 8-6 shot advantage in a evenly played first period. In the second period the game opened up as both teams failed to capitalize on power play opportunities. At 9:31, Chris Niznik stopped a Fox Chapel scoring chance with a great backcheck and caught the Foxes in a line change and in one motion spotted Eddie Martin in alone and Martin buried a shot past Hendry to give Central a 2-0 lead. Hendry kept the game close as he stopped Matt Urso at 5:57 from in close. Fox Chapel got on the board as Matt King won the faceoff to Jake Werner who’s hot to the net created a rebound, which was buried by Jason Lorenz to cut the CC lead to 2-1 at 4:21. The Foxes began to pressure, which resulted in a 5 on 3 power play late in the second and early in the third. Impatience by the FC PP unit and excellent penalty killing by CC, led by Chris Niznik and Eddie Martin killed off a huge opportunity for Fox Chapel. This set the tone for the third period as the Foxes had several opportunities, but did not get great scoring chances and the chances they had were easy pickins for Bryan Adamczak, who returned to the lineup after a layoff of almost a month. Central Catholic Held on for a 2-1 victory setting up a rematch in the first round against Upper St Clair, who beat the Vikings last Monday. Fox Chapel will move on to travel to either Mt Lebanon or McDowell next week to open the playoffs.