Hockey Coach Suspended For Class A Title Game, Team Wins

February 28, 2011 / Hockey

NYPost.com, Marc Raimondi

Jeff Stelmok’s presence was felt Friday night even though he couldn’t be with his St. Anthony’s team due to a league suspension. The coach was calling acting head man Mike O’Connell right up until 8 p.m., the scheduled start time.

“I’m like, ‘Jeff, the pucks about to drop – will you stop?’” O’Connell said with a laugh.

With Stelmok on their minds, the Friars got off to a fast start and never looked back. St. Anthony’s scored four goals in the first period and held on for a series-winning, 6-3 victory over bitter rival Monsignor Farrell in Game 2 of the CHSHL Class A championship at the Ice Hutch in Mount Vernon.

It’s the second straight title for the Friars, who beat the Lions last year, in just their third season in the league.

“We miss him,” sophomore Mike Marnell said. “He’s a great guy on our bench. What he did was to protect our team. We wanted to win for him.”

Stelmok was hit with a two-game suspension after having words with Farrell coach Pete Jerabeck following St. Anthony’s 4-2 Game 1 victory. Lions star forward Nick Thorgersen was issued a spearing major in the closing seconds of that game and Stelmok took umbrage. Neither coach would repeat what he said, but the league took action.

“It was a blatant, deliberate act 100 feet from the action, a potentially life-threatening act and there’s no place in the game for something like that, especially with high school kids,” Stelmok told The Post. “When I tried to speak to Pete about it after the game, he dismissed me. It’s something I shouldn’t have said, but I feel completely justified with what I said to protect my kids for the next games.”

The coach would have had to sit out a potential Game 3, but now one won’t be needed because his team took care of business in his absence. After Farrell’s John Pallis started off scoring with a wrist-shot goal off a Tom Mandala assist just 1:16 in the game, top-seeded St. Anthony’s (16-4-0) reeled off the next three goals.

Chris Wallace scored on a breakaway from J.J. Hickey with 9:02 left in the first period and Wallace followed with a short-handed goal from Jimmy Mazza just 2:17 later. Marnell had the third straight goal just after Farrell was on the power play with 5:52 left in the first.

“Getting those short-handed goals were huge,” O’Connell said. “I said a joke to one of the other coaches, I said, ‘We should play short-handed the rest of the game.’”

Farrell (14-7-0) cut the lead to 3-2 with 5:05 left in the wild first period when Chris Gambardella scored off an assist from Rocco Papapietro. But during a scrum in the front of the net, Marnell put in his second straight goal with 2:51 left to give the Friars a 4-2 lead heading into the second period.

“We were almost a little overmotivated,” O’Connell said. “The defensive systems were not as good as they should have been.”

Nick Randazzo found Evan Katz for a goal with 8:13 left in the second period to give St. Anthony’s a 5-2 lead at the end of a power play. With 5:15 left, goaltender Sean Keating, who O’Connell jokingly called “the best in the world,” stuffed Sean Gargin on a breakaway to preserve the three-goal lead.

The Friars did not get rattled just minutes later when Farrell was awarded a penalty shot and Gargin beat Keating to cut the lead to 5-3. Chris Sabanos, the player who the suspended Thorgersen speared last game, fittingly added an empty-net goal off with 1:40 left in the game.

“We knew that we had to send them away this game and not go to a Game 3,” Wallace said. “We know if the puck goes one way it could be a series.”

There was plenty of physical play in the final period and a half, but never anything overly dirty or chippy. Neither team let emotions get the best of them in a game that could have easily broken into UFC on ice.

“We got rattled few times,” Keating said. “It got rough. We just acted like we’ve been here before. A hit here and there, it’s all part of the game.”

Now St. Anthony’s will get Stelmok back for a trip to Buffalo for the CHSAA state championship. The Friars will meet either St. Francis or St. Joseph in the title game March 6. An assistant coach was keeping Stelmok updated after every goal and the players planned on giving him a call afterward.

“We’re all family, we’re all alumni,” O’Connell said of he and his fellow coaches. “We all played for this team. We did it for Jeffrey. That was our little pre-game speech in the locker room.”

Read more: http://www.nypost.com/p/sports/high_school/more_sports/motivated_by_coach_suspension_st_9KsXhweGIwhNo4PU2Nk5GN#ixzz1FHDP3auK


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