Sun Valley Suns Keep BDHL Title 5-4 Over Moose
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Sun Valley Suns keep BDHL title 5-4 over Moose Robinson scores game winner at Snow King By JEFF CORDES Express Staff Writer Snow King Center was jam-packed, throbbing with music and drink. It was frigid and the only parking to be found was between high snowbanks and squeezed tightly along the road. The cowboy atmosphere was electric for Saturday’s Black Diamond Hockey League tournament championship game between the defending champion Sun Valley Suns and Jackson Hole (Wyo.) Moose. About two-and-a-half hours after the opening faceoff, the great majority of the estimated 2,000 spectators left the rink subdued and disappointed. The Suns celebrated at mid-ice and readied the champagne toast after silencing the Moose 5-4. Suns second-year do-everything forward/defenseman DJ Robinson, who scored the game-winning goal, said about the lack of Wyoming post-game noise, “It’s good to hear the crickets in that building.” Five different Sun Valley Suns players including Robinson scored goals Saturday during the 5-4 win over the host Moose. It gave the Suns an unprecedented second straight BDHL tournament title. Incredibly given the rich and fiery 19-year, 82-game history between the ski resort hockey programs, there wasn’t a single power play in the game. Only four penalty minutes were whistled—matching roughing minors. Coach John Burke’s Suns became the first team in the five-year history of the BDHL tournament to win two consecutive Joe Casey Memorial Cups, and the first to win the title playing away from home. Burke said, “Without the special teams, it was man-to-man hockey. Whoever had the will, intensity and luck was going to come out on top. And that night, the intensity from both teams was off the charts. You could feel it in the rink. “It’s hard for me not to breathe for three hours on the bench, but that’s the way it was. At crunch time like that, it’s awesome. Our guys played with intensity, positivity and support of each other. They got into a real battle, and they battled as hard as they could and won that hockey game.” Moose nemesis Robinson, who beat Jackson Hole with an overtime shootout game-winner on Hailey ice in December, added after Saturday’s win, “Last year we won at home 5-0 (BDHL title game win over the Moose). It always feels better to come out on top in a neck-and-neck game like that.” Idaho Steelheads Hall of Famer Marty Flichel, 43, the Suns seventh-year center who scored the all- important fourth goal breaking a 3-3 tie, said, “It was a well-played hockey game. We just got one more bounce.” Bounces of the puck certainly played a huge role in the outcome, enough for Moose head coach Bob “Howie” Carruth to say afterward, “What a game! What a contest! We love playing Sun Valley. But there were some weird goals.” Suns defenseman Darrell Hay, 38, a two-time Kelly Cup-winning player for the ECHL Idaho Steelheads who was playing in his first BDHL title game, said, “We knew we were playing a well-coached team with guys who can beat you.” Hay added, “We had a pre-game skate and knew we had to be responsible in our own end. Everybody was committed to the job, and we had good leadership. The turning points, I felt, were how we responded when we first got behind and after the Moose caught up.” “Really, we just tried to worry about ourselves. We knew if we did our job, we’d be right there in the end,” said Hay. Suns reply to Moose goals Coach Burke challenged his new Suns team at the first practice last fall to make defending its BDHL tournament title the season’s No. 1 priority. The Suns (16-7) bolstered by first-year contributors like Hay, goalie Bobby Bowden and Swedish forward Rasmus Andersson started like gangbusters—going 9-1 in the first 10 including a key New Year’s home sweep of the Moose. Problems surfaced afterward, including a 3-5 stretch against a series of strong teams. Special teams weren’t great. Burke constantly put his players in different slots because of injuries and absences. “Since our 9-1 start, we never seemed to have a set lineup. No one was used to each other,” he said. “We had five weeks of bad starts where we were chasing the game. We were inconsistent in the last half, although there were stretches when we were really good. “Were our special teams working at the end of the season? No. But it’s always next guy up for us. Because of our depth, it’s a good team. For the tournament, we needed all 20 guys caring for and trusting each other. We had to keep our composure when it counted.” Burke decided to shuffle his forward lines for the BDHL tournament trip to Jackson. When he sat down to look at the final forward line formulations, Burke said he liked what he saw. Yet a new wrinkle developed when the Suns learned they would be playing only one game instead of two at Jackson Hole, with Park City dropping. It threw a wrench into Burke’s successful two-goalie rotation of Bowden and third-year netminder Matt Cooper. The coach spent the lead-up to last weekend’s tournament trying to be as diplomatic as he could to the pair of goalies. Cooper, last year’s 5-0 shutout BDHL winner over Jackson Hole at Hailey’s Campion Ice House, got the nod—although Cooper split in his two games against the Moose this season including a 3-0 loss at Snow King Center back on Dec. 15. It was Cooper suffering the first bad bounce on Saturday. On Jackson Hole’s first shift, dangerous University of Minnesota-Duluth wing Drew Akins came busting across the crease with a hard shot that Cooper blocked—but the puck ricocheted away and deflected off a Suns defenseman’s body and into the Idaho net for a 1-0 Moose lead at 87 seconds. It was the first and only Moose lead of the game. But it gave Carruth’s team a lift. Remember, the Moose were 5-0 in BDHL tournament games played on their home ice since 2015 with a 33-11 scoring advantage including Friday’s 6-2 semi-final win over Bozeman. The Suns answered with three goals in 11 minutes. Andersson scored his 11th goal on passes from his linemates Dylan Shamburger and their new center Justin Taylor. Max Tardy made no mistake from the slot on a pass from the corner for a 2-1 lead, the assists going to linemates Nick Curry and Spencer Brendel. With two minutes left in the first period, Andersson knocked the puck away from a Moose player at the blue line and sent leading Suns scorer Shamburger in for his 10th goal. It could have been 4-1, but Moose goalie Nick Krauss flashed out his foot to stop a near-certain bid by Bryan O’Connell with a minute left. Robinson said, “Rasmus is a tenacious young player, and Shammy was hungry for the win.” But the Moose capitalized on a Suns clearing mistake to swarm the offensive zone with its No. 1 line of A.J. Sanders, Tom Hartnett and Akins. It was just a matter of time before Hartnett beat Cooper from the center slot with 38 seconds left, on passes from Akins and Sanders. “Drew can find the open guy as well as anyone,” said Burke. “That’s the best line in the BDHL. We concentrated on stopping them, but we couldn’t,” said Burke about the Moose trio who combined for 45 of 165 Moose goals during the 30-game Jackson campaign. With its two-goal lead reduced to 3-2 after one period, the Suns had another surprise in store. Just 14 seconds into the second period, Hartnett went hard into the offensive zone boards and centered a pass that Sanders tipped past Cooper for a 3-3 tie game. “The pass came from a bad angle and it deflected off a stick,” said Burke. “Things were changing rapidly. After that third goal, I told Bobby (Bowden) to get ready.” Would Burke make a mid-game goalie change? It would be uncharacteristic for a coach known for trusting his players. Flichel, who broke a pane of glass with a shot during the pre-game tune-up, postponed Burke’s ultimate goalie-change decision by scoring his first goal of the season to restore the Suns lead to 4-3 at five minutes. There was no question Flichel was determined to score. Burke said, “Marty has a killer shot and great release. He was going to shoot that night.” Flichel is the all-time Steelheads record holder with 436 games, 148 goals and 260 assists in nine Boise seasons from 2002-10. All game, he won critical face-offs whenever he was up against Moose center Sanders. And he whipped off shots. He came down the left wing and let loose with a cannon that deflected off a Moose defender and past Krauss for the goal. Robinson, Flichel’s wing, had a front-row seat. “I saw Marty wanted to shoot so I went to the net for a tip or a screen. Krauss is a really good goalie, and he read the original trajectory of Marty’s shot. Hitting the defenseman slowed the puck and it went into the net.” The Moose had one more answer.