GRANITE CITY – Highland upended Alton 6-2 in Game 2 of their best-of-three Mississippi Valley Club Hockey Association Class 1A first-round series at Granite City’s Wilson Park Ice Rink to move the series to a third game at 8:45 tonight at East Alton Ice Arena.
“We didn’t play our game,” felt Alton hockey coach Steven Campbell.
The winner will take on Belleville in the Class 1A semifinals beginning at 8:45 p.m. Thursday at East Alton Ice Arena with the winner of the best-of-three moving to the Class 1A Final, which begins Feb. 16.
“They beat us to the puck; they just controlled the whole game on us and that’s the result,” Campbell said. “We got the first goal and it was like, ‘OK, we’ve got some momentum here’ and Highland came back and they responded. They wanted it more than us and they got the win.
“I told (the Redbird players), ‘hey guys, this series is tied. It’s one game that controls our season.’ We’ll see which team shows up tomorrow night.”
What AHS has to do is simple, in Campbell’s mind. “We have to be physical, we have to shoot the puck,” Campbell said. “There’s a lot of stuff that we didn’t do that we did in the first game. When you don’t do that stuff and you don’t play fundamental hockey, it’s why we lost.”
The Redbirds got off to a quick start when Tanner St. Peters skated in and found Jack Sumner with a pass; Sumner then beat Highland goaltender Hunter Micheletto just 47 seconds into the game to put Alton ahead 1-0. The Redbird lead lasted just 2:31 when Devin Korte put the puck past Redbird goalie Caleb Currie, thanks to helpers from Ryker Grove and Tyler Lange, tying the game at 1-1.
Highland then took the lead with 37.2 seconds left in the first when Zackery Korte scored from Brock Troxell and Devin Korte to go to the first intermission ahead 2-1; the lead was extended to 3-1 with 8:30 left in the second on a Troxell power-play goal (St. Peters was off for tripping), with assists going to Zackery Korte and Lucas Korte. Alton answered, however, when Bryce Simon beat Micheletto with an unassisted goal with 5:54 to go in the second to pull Alton to 3-2 through two periods.
Alton stayed to within a goal of the Bulldogs until Devin Korte scored the backbreaker unassisted with 3:51 left in the third, followed by a pair of Zackery Korte goals to finish a hat trick with 3:07 left and 12.0 seconds to go into an empty net to finish the win.
Highland had 40 shots on goal, with Currie turning back 34 of them; the Redbirds managed 32 shots on goal, with Micheletto recording 30 saves.
“If we don’t bring it tomorrow, our season’s over with,” Campbell said. “Hopefully,we come out and play good for three periods; they’ll be ready to play.”
