By T.J. Turrisi
February 9, 2010 — Sometimes you’re supposed to beat the teams you’re not supposed to. Other times the teams you’re supposed to beat don’t suppose you ought to.
And the way those two sentences make your brain feel is how Meadville fans felt when leaving DeArment Ice Arena Monday after the latter happened in a 5-2 loss to rival Cathedral Prep.
The Ramblers (6-11-0 PIHL) halted a six-game breakaway by the homestanding Bulldogs (19-4-4 overall, 9-5-3 PIHL).
Seasoned Meadville head coach Jamie Plunkett even had an epiphany during a postgame interview.
“I was listening to some friends of mine at some clinics and they said, ‘It’s funny, sometimes the last game you win in a winning streak you probably don’t deserve to win,’” he said. “The other night Taylor played really well and we were outshot three-to-one and we won.
“Sometimes when you are on a winning streak you win games just because you have the confidence and the breaks are going your way. (Monday) just reinforces you’ve got to be ready to work hard. For us to score goals we’ve got to really do a lot of the little, dirty jobs.”
Unfortunately Meadville kept it clean in that fashion, not getting much in the way of scrap goals in front of the cage. That despite outshooting Prep 29-24 — 23-13 through two periods.
The Ramblers, on the other hand, could have starred on the show Dirty Jobs, ringing up too many penalties to fit on one scoresheet. Penalties for things like slashing, tripping, high-sticking, cross-checking and one 10-minute misconduct.
Prep’s gameplan of playing physical and frustrating Meadville worked.
“I think we got a little frustrated and got knocked off our game,” Meadville captain Drew Finton said. “They came out and got a pretty fluke goal 15 seconds in (to the third). I think that really took a lot of air out of our sails. We weren’t really able to recover.”
Despite a near brouhaha late in the second period which resulted in two Meadville and two Prep players in the box, Finton found the net to tie things up, 2-2, going into the big break.
Finton had time to gather the pick on Varo’s stick side and wrist it to the twine unassisted.
“I thought when we got that goal to tie it up it really might help us as we headed into the third,” Plunkett said. “That goal 15 seconds in was a killer.”
Prep’s John Gordon poked the puck in off Taylor Nickerson’s foot for the 3-2 momentum-buster early in the final stanza.
Prep was energized by the score and continued to pound Meadville physically until scoring with 3:29 remaining to basically put things out of reach.
Tony Tebaldi snapped a no-look shot past Nickerson to make it 4-2.
That goal came shortly after Prep junior forward Robert Maust laid a late hit on Finton at the other end of the ice.
“He’s was chirping all night,” said Finton of Maust. “I took it to him a couple times. It was a little battle. He gave it a little acting, but it was dirty.”
Prep knocked final tally in on an empty-netter with 17 ticks left in the game.
“We needed to get more bodies to the net,” Finton said. “We needed to get there and get that rebound. (Varo) was seeing way too much and that showed up on the scoreboard.”
Varo finished with 27 saves.
“Their kid in goal played very well tonight,” Plunkett said. “He made all their regular saves and then he made a couple nice ones.
“I thought there were stretches where we outplayed them and outshot them. The only problem I had with a lot of our shots was (Varo) saw a lot of our shots. There was no traffic in front. We didn’t do a very good job of getting in front and making it difficult on them.”
Sophomore forward Cade Nickerson scored the ’Dogs first goal on assists from Rob Macielak and Jarrod Kilburn in the second period.
Prep’s first two goals were acquired by Chris Coombs (first period) and Matt Callaghan (second).
