High school ice hockey thriving locally
The Anaheim Ducks High School Hockey League has come miles from its launch in 2008, when it began with but a single team.
Now in its 15th season, league commissioner Matt Blanchart is proud to say that high school ice hockey has seen continuous growth across Southern California.
The league now has an all-time high of 55 teams, offering ice hockey to kids in the counties of Orange, Los Angeles and San Diego, as well as the Inland Empire.
High school sports thrive on regional rivalries. Huntington Beach, at one point, fielded its own team, and when that was the case, the matchups with Edison became known as the Surf City Face-off.
Edison took on Beach Cities on Sept. 24, and Chargers coach Tyler Wilkerson said his players still feel that it is a rivalry when those teams play each other.
Beach Cities is a non-pure team into which Fountain Valley, Huntington Beach, Marina, Ocean View, Bolsa Grande, La Quinta and Westminster feed into from Orange County. It can also select players from San Pedro and seven schools in Long Beach.
“It probably takes the student-athletes a few months to understand how that works,” Blanchart said of the non-pure format. “Once the kids do, I believe they do have a true sense of a community, an area where they come from.
“It’s interesting because some schools will be rivals in other sports, but yet they’ll be teammates in hockey, so that’s always an interesting dynamic, which we really like.”
Blanchart added that non-pure teams exist to allow competitive teams to be formed and, in some cases, compete at multiple levels. The league has three varsity divisions and a junior varsity level.
Beach Cities coach Dan Maxwell noted that despite his roster being comprised of kids from several cities, many of them knew each other going back to their days in roller hockey.
“It’s come full circle,” Maxwell said. “Now, they’re playing on different ice hockey teams, but they all know each other — at least a huge amount of them do.”
The non-pure teams may have some elements of playing for a club, but Maxwell said high school hockey provides some valuable life lessons, including a separation from age-group play.
“You have to learn how to be a freshman, you have to learn how to be a senior,” Maxwell said. “You have to learn how to do that stuff. That’s real life, not always playing with your same age group every single year and moving up together, and then your pecking order is the same.”
Edison won a Division 3 championship in the 2016-17 season, but Wilkerson said he feels the program’s greatest accomplishment is becoming a pure team as a public school.
And while the Surf City Face-off no longer features a pure Edison versus Huntington Beach per say, Wilkerson said the Beach Cities games are ones he marks on the calendar.
“I kind of reference it to college football, but if Alabama beats Auburn, they get the best players in the state, so that’s a big game I always circle,” Wilkerson said. “If we can beat Beach Cities, hopefully some of those fringe kids who have the choice between going to Huntington Beach or Edison will come our way.”
The league plays an 18-game schedule over 20 weeks, followed by a single-elimination postseason.
Edison (2-0, five points) picked up a shootout win over Beach Cities (1-2, four points), despite being heavily outshot, 45-15, in a game at the Rinks Lakewood Ice.
Goaltenders Tyler Harmon of Edison and Michael Consolazio of Beach Cities kept the game scoreless through regulation and overtime, leading up to a riveting eight-round shootout.
Wallace Stirbu and Conner Nieto converted the first two attempts for Beach Cities. Cole Jacobson then scored in the third round of the shootout for Edison, knotting it up at 2-2. William Lloyd II had also scored for the Chargers.
Harmon would not be beaten again. Zane Jones broke a nine-shot goalless drought for the shooters, and Harmon stopped Niko Aroonprapun to give the Chargers the win.
“That was the longest shootout I think I’ve had, because I let in the first two goals,” Harmon said. “I was pushing snow in front of the crease so they would mishandle the puck.”
Consolazio provided a humorous moment, kissing the goalpost after the bids by Charlie Crossett and Zack Douglass both caught the pipe and stayed out.
“I respect that,” Harmon said with a laugh. “I would do the same.”
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