Nearly nine months ago, Carlisle/Cedar Cliff and York Suburban/Irish met for the CPIHL's Tier III championship at Twin Ponds West. Suburban won in a thrilling shootout to claim the program's first title.
Monday night, the two teams renewed acquaintances, back at TPW, for the first time since that championship tilt.
This was nothing like that game.
Carlisle/Cedar Cliff outshot Suburban by an obscene 77-9 margin in cruising to a 10-2 win to remain unbeaten (5-0-0, 10 points). The defending tier champs from York fell to 0-5-0.
Nick Wagner went off, potting a double hat trick for the high-flying "Thundering Colts" to give him a league-leading 13 goals on the season. Sam Buran had two goals and five assists for team-high seven points.
"Our focus was to get the puck down low, cycle and generate a lot of chances down low, and I think we did a good job of that," Colts associate coach Chris Moore said. "Definitely pleased, but we don't want to get complacent, and that's one of the things we've stressed. All the guys who needed to come up big, did."
The tilted ice exhausted Irish goalie J.T. Morris, who was actually pretty solid between the pipes. A lesser effort and the score — given the amount of rubber Morris faced — could have been much, much worse.
Suburban is minus three key players from last year's title run: Alex Smith, who is playing at Susky/KD, goalie Nathan Gladfelter and Connor McCormick — the hero of last year's shootout win — who is playing travel hockey.
"The only thing you can say is that we have a new group of guys, and some of them are definitely less experienced in the game," Suburban coach Joe Skehan said. "We just try to work from game to game, work on specific things with our players."
Carlisle/Cedar Cliff got on the board 2:12 in on a short-handed goal (during the only penalty call of the entire game, it turned out) by Wagner, the first of four goals in the opening stanza for the Colts.
Applying constant pressure with not much resistance, Carlisle/Cedar Cliff led 6-2 after two periods, with the Colts hitting the half-century mark in shots on goal with 6:03 still left in the frame, barely halfway through the game. They added four more in the final period on strength of a 21-0 SOG margin.
Elsewhere in Tier III on Monday, Middletown/CD East beat Susquehanna/McDevitt 9-3. In Tier II, Palmyra topped Warwick 8-3. Tier I action saw Elizabethtown beat winless Central Dauphin 10-4, while Dallastown topped Lower Dauphin 7-3 and Central York tripped Hempfield 8-2.
JEFF DEWEES: jdewees@pnco.com
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