When Bethel Park opened the season it appeared the team was going to be a prohibitive favorite to make it to Consol Energy Center for the PIHL Class AAA Penguins Cup championship game.
Then came the slump.
As last week ended, the Black Hawks (4-4-1) dropped their fourth consecutive game, this one a 7-0 blowout at home against first-place Peters Township. Instead of putting their game on the shelf and walking away for a while, they instead headed to Jamestown, N.Y., for a tournament over the weekend.
“We’ve played well in several of the games, but we just weren’t able to score goals when we needed them,” Bethel Park coach Jim McVay said. “Part of the reason why we came to the tournament in New York is because we always try to get better all the time and part of that is getting more repetitions and more time on the ice to work on our game.”
Bethel Park has been a postseason mainstay and has been to the playoffs for the past 24 seasons, which includes every year since the PIHL was formed in 1999. In fact, the Black Hawks hold the longest current streak of playoff appearances in any classification by any school in any team sport and won their most recent championship in 2012. They also won another crown in 2014 when they competed in the USA Hockey National Championships in Omaha and defeated Providence Catholic (Ill.) in the title game.
Last season, though Bethel Park again qualified for the playoffs, the team lost in the first round of the tournament by a sixth-seeded Butler team that went on to the championship game. It was a stunning defeat for the Black Hawks and one that the team has used as motivation in the early part of the year when it opened 4-0-1 and was in first place in the 11-team classification.
Even with four consecutive losses, aside from the blowout against Peters Township, Bethel Park has played every game close to the vest. The Black Hawks are 4-2-1 in games decided by two goals or less despite a defense that has shuffled forwards for injured blueliners in an effort to stay on an even keel.
Evan Oakley, who has five goals this season, moved from the backside to the front line, while Tyler Kruszewski, who leads the team with six assists and eight points, shifted from a top-line forward to defense.
All of this movement and personnel changes have had an impact on senior goaltender Tre Lowe, who was an all-star last year as a junior. Because of the team’s constantly shifting defense, his goals-against average has ballooned a bit from a 2.01 in 2014-15 to a 2.56, but it’s his save percentage that is a bit more telling as he went from a .905 that was among the league leaders among starters last season to only .884 this year.
“At times I think he’s been frustrated because he was very successful last year and this year has been a little bit more of a struggle,” McVay said. “But it’s not how you play in November and December, but how you’re playing in March and, the way things are bunched up right now, nothing is guaranteed.”
First Published: December 11, 2015, 5:00 a.m.