Seneca Valley Raiders

2004 Penguins Cup A Finals PITTSBURGH – Somerset entered the 2004 Penguins Cup final after playing a nearly perfect game against Quaker Valley with a 5-2 victory last Monday. Goaltender Wes Cramer was absolutely stellar and the big line of Cullen Eddy, Bret Ziegler and Matt Rouch provided the rest in the goal department. The play of the rest of the Somerset team was very impressive as the Eagles defensive unit and second line players played smart simple hockey eliminating mistakes and showing great discipline. The Eagles entered the 2004 Penguins Cup final after a great regular season with two impressive playoff victories over Sewickley Academy and Quaker Valley, which are two pretty good teams and on paper at least probably held all the edges in the world to advance to the State Championship against Radnor at the Neville Island Sports Center on April 10th. Enter Serra Catholic, who after surviving the 2nd period against Blackhawk and the 2nd best goaltender in the Class A playoffs John Fitzgerald, has been a team on a mission. One of the most amazing things about Serra is that they only have 10 skaters who play and of course Timmy Johnson. In the quarterfinals against Blackhawk, the Cougars outshot Serra 22-7 in the 2nd period to tie the game at two apiece. So why am I still talking about this game? The reason is that this is exactly when Serra Catholic molded who they were going to be the rest of the playoffs, because Blackhawk expended so much energy and Timmy Johnson made at least a half dozen spectacular saves in that period and Serra has not looked back since going on to defeat Blackhawk 4-2 and then the momentum just kept building as the Eagles continued their mastery of Bishop McCort with a 5-2 victory, with timely scoring and just simply smart hockey. Somerset would present a different set of problems for Serra with a big scoring line and the key to this game as the Eagles from McKeesport way knew going in would be who would take control of this hockey game early on due to the overwhelming advantage that Serra had with the players who have been here before and the coaching staff of the bench with Tom Mooney and Eddie Figas, who isn’t technically the head coach, but for some reason sat out the past two games serving a suspension. Out came the Serra Eagles in the first period and it didn’t take long as Ray Gillis made a tremendous play behind the net to capture the puck, control it and center it in front to a wide open Joey Manning who beat Wes Cramer through the 5-hole at 14:26 to put Serra on top 1-0. Serra gained the line matchups they wanted and was very physical against the Eddy-Zeigler-Rouch unit shutting them down in the opening period and while yielding shots against Johnson, who was as cool as a cucumber. Joey Manning gave Serra a 2-0 lead, after some nice work in the slot by Justin Lubasch and Ray Gillis worked the puck to the front of the net at 7:24, as Manning beat the Somerset defense and Wes Cramer to a rebound and banged it home before the huge throng of Somerset faithful could say Penguins Cup. Serra may have gotten a little overzealous with hitting Somerset and gave them a 5 on 3 power play with 5:03 left in the opening period. Eric DiLoretto blasted a Cullen Eddy pass from the far boards up under the crossbar with 3:56 left to cut the Serra lead to 2-1. Somerset picked up their physical play in the 2nd period but just could not beat Johnson who stopped all 12 shots he faced and frankly looked as if he would never be beaten. Serra got a rare power play in the second period and they made it count as Justin Lubasch walked out of the corner and chipped a wraparound over Wes Cramer to give Serra a big insurance goal on the power play and a 3-1 lead with 11:35 left in the 2nd period. While Somerset was outshooting Serra 28-16 after two periods, the great work of the line of Tony Duco-Steve Gruhalla and Philip Ivkovich to shut down the big line from Somerset with a combined effort of the defensive trio of Ryan Noone, Steve Kolbe and Joshua Jones and of course Timmy Johnson, Serra was well in control of the hockey game. The third period was vintage Serra Catholic, a text book of how to play with the lead by keeping the third guy high in the zone, how to gain the red line and make their opponent bring the puck 180 feet and how to just completely frustrate their opponent. These Eagles would not be denied outshooting Somerset 8-5 in the final period and walking away with an impressive 3-1 win over Somerset. This is the 4th Penguins Cup in 5 years for Serra Catholic and atones for the loss in the 2003 championship to Westmont and setting up a rematch of sorts of the 2002 Pennsylvania Cup in which the Eagles defeated defending 2003 State A Champion Radnor in a thriller at Rostraver 5-4. Should be a great matchup at Neville Island and there is one thing you can count on ….these Serra Eagles will be there !