Mill Creek’s Ice Hawks fighting for state title
BY KRISTI REED
Mill Creek’s Ice Hockey team advanced to round four of the state championship this past weekend. The Ice Hawks are hoping to end their inaugural season with a title, but have a tough road ahead of them as playoff competition intensifies.
The Ice Hawks, ranked number two in division 1A, played four games in five days as they finished the regular season last week and immediately began playoff competition on Saturday.
Mill Creek will get a much-deserved break this week before heading into round four of tournament play next Tuesday, March 25 at the Duluth Ice Forum. Game time is scheduled for 7:20 p.m.
RAMS GET THREE-PEAT
The Ice Hawks finished the regular season last week with games against Grayson and Pope.
Heading into last week’s game, the top ranked Rams were the only team in division 1A that had beaten Mill Creek. Wednesday night marked the third time Grayson has emerged victorious as the Rams won 7-0.
“We had a couple of players that were there physically, but not mentally,” said Ice Hawks head coach Ray Nowakowski.
“It’s one of those things that I think, as a coach, it’s not that the boys aren’t able to take the wins, I think it’s a mental block.”
Nowakowski said it is very difficult to recover from such a large point deficit.
“When you get down that far, if you have even the slightest loss of confidence, you pretty much call it quits and I think that’s what some of the boys did,” he said.
Despite the loss, Nowakowski said he did see some good things come out of the game.
“We saw a lot of passing and opening up the ice. We did see our forwards covering the point man when they were in their defensive zone,” he said.
Nowakowski said his players were disappointed, but remained upbeat as they prepared to face Pope and head into the championships.
POPE PREVAILS
Mill Creek traveled to Marietta on Friday to face Pope High School for the final game of the regular season.
Pope became the second team this season to defeat the Ice Hawks as they skated to a 3-1 victory.
Mill Creek’s only score came from Jordan Senecal with an assist from Avery Barrett.
PLAYOFFS BEGIN
As the Ice Hawks ended their regular season, Nowakowski said he thought the playoffs would be interesting for his team.
“We’ve taken them as far as we could on the training side, now they’ve got to have it in their hearts to be able to do it,” he said.
Mill Creek played Walton Saturday in the first round of the Georgia High School League (GHSL) state championship tournament.
The Ice Hawks had faced the Raiders twice in the regular season, winning once and tying once.
General Manager Rick Cubbage felt the Ice Hawks had a good chance of doing well in their championship debut.
“Anything can happen in the tournament,” he said. “These teams are closely matched - more so than when we first started the season. It makes it interesting, makes it a lot of fun.”
Saturday’s game proved much more fun for Mill Creek than Walton as the Ice Hawks blanked the Raiders 8-0.
Mill Creek scored early and often in the rout of fifth ranked Walton.
Jordan Senecal scored first for Mill Creek less than a minute into the game. Mario Guttuso was credited with the assist. Later in the period, Sean Lautzenhsier picked up an unassisted goal to make the score 2-0. A little over a minute later, Greg LaChance scored with an assist from George Bryant to give the Hawks a 3-0 lead after the first period of play.
Walton played better defensively during the first part of the second period, but quickly fell apart as the Ice Hawks went on another three goal scoring run.
Chase Little scored first with an assist from Nathan Norowski. Lautzenhsier scored his second goal of the night six minutes later with an assist from Jordan Caton. With less than a minute remaining in the second period, Senecal also scored his second goal of the night, once again assisted by Guttuso.
In the third period, the Ice Hawks added insult to injury as they scored twice more.
Little became the third Ice Hawk to score twice during the game as his goal gave Mill Creek a 7-0 lead. Lautzenhsier made the assist.
With just over a minute left in the game, Caleb Rainey scored Mill Creek’s last goal of the night with an assist from LaChance for a final score of 8-0.
