Baldwin Highlanders - 1975 & 1988 AAA

2005 Meadville Bulldog Invitational Championship LaSalle coach Wally Muhlenbronner spends a lot of time traveling all over the Northeastern United States to take his team to places such as Rhode Island, New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, Maryland and gold ole’ Pennsylvania to give his program an opportunity to not only play great competition, but to learn from their stops along the way. The annual homage to the’ House of Chills’ in Meadville in January is one of those excursions, which will make you appreciate heat and for those who pay close attention some nice lessons about hockey program successes via from the 9-time State Champion Meadville Bulldogs. Coach Wally led the Explorers to the 1998 Pennsylvania Class AAA title, but his team has been knocking at the door to get back to the finals every year since then, but has run into the Malvern Prep roadblock. Mt Lebanon has been paying attention for the past few years and most recently in 2004 the Blue Devils came within just 5 minutes of sending Malvern Prep home trophyless for the 4th straight year. The defending Penguins Cup champions have had an interesting year to say the least and head coach Paul Taibi has rooted the distractions out of the Mt Lebanon locker room for the entire first half of the season and was looking at the 2005 Bulldog Invitational to get a look at some players who maybe could step into the roles needed to return to the State Finals in March. The Blue Devils played the entire tournament without Shane Ferguson, Tyler Murovich and goaltender Evan Baehr, who were fulfilling commitments with their club teams. Sometimes, in these situations you find that your team is solely dependant on feature players, but in this situation coach Taibi found a few ‘diamonds in the rough’ in goaltender Matt ‘the Marksman’ Stein and James Cichra, who both have played significant roles in getting Lebo to the finals along with ole’ reliables Tony ‘or it Tom’ Valerino, Chad Uddstrom and Craig Anderson. Matt Stein made a great leg pad save at 13:51. Mt Lebanon went on the power play at 10:24 and made it count as James Cichra banged home a third chance as Ken Wochele stoned Valerino and Uddstrom. Stein continued his strong goaltending as he stopped Steve Klenk with a glove save at 7:48 and John Williams on a shorthanded breakaway at 6:57. Wochele kept his team within one as he stopped Chad Uddstrom from point blank range at 6:32. The teams battled into the 2nd period in a fast paced and physical very even one-goal contest with the shots 15-14 in favor of the Blue Devils. Mt Lebanon would capitalize late in the period on the power play as James Cichra cut across the slot and tipped a Craig Anderson point shot past Wochele to give Lebo a 2-0 lead with 1:37 remaining in the period. LaSalle got new life in the 3rd period as they scored on the power play at 14:18 as L.G Gatison found a loose puck on the doorstep on a shot from Mike Martinelli from the point and the Explorers cut the lead to 2-1. Coach Wally’s boys from Philly were not done and John Williams tied the game on a great effort as he beat the Mt Lebanon defense and lofted a chip shot high over the short side of Matt Stein at 12:54 to make it two apiece. The Explorers out shot Mt Lebanon 15-5 in the 3rd period and almost went in front at 10:23, but the play was blown dead as the official lost sight of the puck. The game moved into overtime and on a bang bang play Steve Klenk found a wide open L.G Gatison, who made no mistake and beat Matt Stein through the 5 hole giving LaSalle a 3-2 overtime victory and boat load of confidence heading into the playoff stretch run in a 7-8 team race in March for the 2005 Flyers Cup AAA Championship.