JDHS hockey dominates at Kodiak

It was target practice for the Juneau-Douglas High School: Yadaa.at Kalé hockey team on Friday and Saturday on the home ice of Kodiak.

The visiting Crimson Bears outshot their Northern Lights Conference host Bears 85-21 in the two-game series and posted wins of 5-0 and 9-0.

“It was two pretty strong nights,” JDHS head coach Matt Boline said. “It was nice to have a change of pace for our guys, a little bit different look and come out with a couple of wins…And Kodiak is an incredible host. The whole community pitched in, the hospitality everywhere we went was five stars.”

Senior Emilio Holbrook scored three goals and had two assists on the weekend, senior Dylan Sowa three goals and one assist, senior Luke Bovitz two goals and two assists, senior Loren Platt four assists, junior Elliot Welch two goals and one assist and junior Isaac Phelps one goal and one assist. Senior Matthew Plang, junior Paxton Mertl and sophomore Caden Morris had one goal each. Senior Zander Smith, junior Nolan Cruz and freshman Summit Bos had one assist each.

“This weekend’s scoring was kind of the usual suspects,” Boline said of his top goal scorers. “This weekend one of the things we asked as a team was for some of the non-seniors to step up and take some leadership and try to drive the bus a little bit. You have somebody like Elliot Welch, who’s a junior, this is his third year playing varsity hockey, an incredible teammate and hockey player, he really stepped up big and held us in there when we needed it the most and he has been doing that for the last three years. We’ve asked him to play defense the last few weekends now, too, and that is part of the improvement we have been making on keeping pucks out of our own net, him and Luke Bovitz playing defense.”

On Friday, the Crimson Bears put nine shots on goal as they felt out their opponents and at 10:39 of the second period, Sowa found the net with an assist by Platt and JDHS kept that 1-0 advantage into the start of the final period.

The Crimson Bears exploded for scores in the final 15 minutes with Welch scoring at 14:04 (assist by Bos), Bovitz on a power play at 5:44 (assist Holbrook), Holbrook unassisted at 3:49 and Morris with six seconds remaining (assist Platt).

“We didn’t start out too strong,” Boline said. “It was 0-0 in the first period…And then we started to play in the third period. Through all that, it was pretty stable and reliable defense and of course our last line of defense is our goalie, Caleb Friend.”

Friend, the JDHS senior goalie, was responsible for two clean sheets, stopping 11 shots on Friday and seven on Saturday. Sophomore goalie Taylor Petrie relieved Friend for most of the third period of Saturday’s action and stopped three shots.

“It doesn’t matter who you are playing against or how many shots you get, a shut out is a shut out, they are pretty hard to come by,” Boline said. “It was pretty awesome seeing him do that. It wasn’t easy, having a little extra goal support helped. Every rink in this state is totally different and Kodiak is no exception. They did a remodel this summer so they have walls on the rink now and locker rooms, which is a big improvement from the covered outdoor sheet they had before.”

Prior to this season, the Kodiak rink was similar to a covered playground basketball court, except with ice, and teams had to sit on their benches between periods while the surface was smoothed. It had no walls or locker rooms.

Although improved, the rink is still in the finishing phases of construction with no ventilation yet, but now has walls and locker rooms. Limited insulation to date gives the acoustics an echo. Lack of ventilation causes the rink glass to fog so squeegees are provided around the ice, and the lighting gets a weird glow as fog rises off the ice early in the game and then drips as water from the rafters during the later stages.

“For a goalie in that position you are tracking a pretty small piece of rubber that is going pretty fast so that gets challenging,” Boline said. “Caleb really had to be on his game the whole time. And actually today (Saturday) our sophomore goaltender Taylor Petrie she went in and played most of the third period. It was a tandem effort today for sure…but the arena is a big improvement for their program and it does look real nice.”

JDHS was called for five penalties Friday: Mertl for hooking (11:53 second period), Bovitz tripping (9:07 second), Mertl tripping (4:02 second), Sowa roughing (9:56 third) and Bovitz roughing (9:56 third).

Kodiak was called for four penalties in the third period: Rylee Otto for cross-checking (10:19), Kevin Foster roughing (9:56), Collin Gibbs roughing (9:56) and Miles Grimes cross-checking (6:06).

On Saturday, the Crimson Bears established their presence on the ice early, taking a 3-0 advantage in the first period as Mertl scored at 8:53 (assist Platt), Welch at 4:06 (assist Bovitz) and Plang at 1:43 (assist Sowa).

Bovitz continued the onslaught with an unassisted goal at 14:04 of the second period followed by the Crimson Bears’ Sowa at 5:32 (assists Welch and Bovitz), Holbrook at 4:54 (assists Smith and Cruz) and Sowa again with six seconds remaining (assist Phelps).

Phelps would add a goal at 13:41 of the third period (assist Holbrook) and Holbrook scored 17 seconds later (assist Platt) for the Crimson Bears’ ninth goal.

Plang, who swam for JDHS this year as well, was noted by Boline.

“He was swimming the first five games of the season,” Boline said. “We told him that was a priority and we were cheering for him to win a state tournament in the swimming pool. He brings a whole different element that a lot of other players can’t. He has size, he’s strong and he is fast as heck.”

Just two penalties were called in the game: Kodiak’s Grimes for tripping (1:38 second) and JDHS’ Phelps for tripping (2:09 third).

“The first game we had a lot of shots on net and were generated from within five feet of the goal, so lots of shots and rebounds and follow-up attempts,” Boline said. “When you have that kind of situation, things tend to get kind of chippy. There was one particular play that yielded two penalties for both teams in front of the net so that is how the first night went. We were fighting and clawing for every goal we could get, and Kodiak was fighting and clawing to try and preserve their game and see if they could come out on top…Today (Saturday), we tightened up a few things in our defensive zone and tightened up our puck management and our shot selection…and I think the possession time was considerably in our favor. When we have the puck it is tough for us to get penalties. We were able to win that possession game and we played a lot faster than Kodiak did.”

JDHS will host their NLC rival Soldotna Stars at the Treadwell Ice Arena on Friday (junior varsity 5:30 p.m. / varsity 7:30 p.m.) and Saturday (junior varsity 1:30 p.m. / varsity 3:30 p.m.).

Some of the Crimson Bears seniors and juniors were sophomores and freshmen when the Stars defeated them 2-1 in the 2023 ASAA Division II State Championship game. Sowa scored that game’s first goal and Sowa, Bovitz, Welch and Holbrook had key goals and roles in first-round games to put JDHS into the title match. In that tournament, the Crimson Bears opened with a 7-4 win over Kenai, defeated top-ranked Houston 4-3 and then met Soldotna.

“I think all of the goal scorers from that contending team are still wearing Crimson Bears jerseys this year,” Boline said. “I think right now we are turning the page on Kodiak and really looking at next weekend against Soldotna. We have three weekends in a row of conference games and the strong focus for us has been, ‘How do we get through conference games, how do we get the best we can get out of everybody and play the best defense we can and lock things down?’ We are really looking forward to Soldtona coming in…They made it to the state championship game last year and lost to Houston so they are in the big dance two years in a row. They are not to be taken lightly at all…They are a team that gets our energy up, and we have been battling them back and forth for quite a while now.”

• Contact Klas Stolpe at klas.stolpe@juneauempire.com.