By Michael Holcombe
All season long the Monroe Township High School ice hockey team has been fighting a nip and tuck battle to stay at or above .500 and thus qualify for the state tournament.
But now it is getting down to crunch time and with only three games left before the cutoff, Monroe needs to win two to qualify. One is against Ewing, a team that Monroe has already defeated this year 7-1, but the other two games are against Toms River North and Toms River East.
They won’t be the first clashes with the Toms River schools for Monroe this year. A little over a week ago Monroe lost 4-2 to Toms River South. In as much as East beat South and South beat North, it appears that this Friday’s 3:15 p.m. game with North on home ice at the Wall Sports Arena may provide Monroe with the best chance to pick up the win it so sorely needs.
”This is a big game for us,” Monroe coach Gerard Minter said of Friday’s contest. “We’re going to be digging ourselves a big hole if we don’t win on Friday. To leave the last two games and have to win them both is not the way we want to do it.”
Currently, Monroe is 6-6 but as far as the NJSIAA is concerned, its record is 5-6. This anomaly is the result of the fact that one of Monroe’s wins came against JFK’s first year program last week. As a sub-varsity program, JFK was considered a non game in terms of qualifying for the state tournament in spite of Monroe’s 8-3 win.
Either way, it wouldn’t have any effect on the math that is pressing on Monroe. The squad still would need two wins to get in. But just because the game didn’t make the state’s ledger, it doesn’t mean that it was of no benefit to Minter and his skaters.
”It was a good chance to play everybody,” Minter said. “It was a good chance for everybody to get into the game. Everyone played equal ice time.”
While Minter was substituting freely, it didn’t seem to hinder Monroe’s ability to dominate the contest as his squad outshot JFK 52-12. It also gave the team’s two freshmen goalies, John Carroll and Justin Pieron a chance to log some time in goal. The two split the goaltending duties for the day. Meanwhile, Monroe’s John Scarfa was good for a hat trick.
While the JFK game served its purpose, Monroe also caught another break. A light schedule this week will allow it to get two on-ice practices in preparation for Friday’s crucial contest.
”I’m glad we have the whole week off up to that game,” Minter said of the break. “Tuesday and Thursday are our on ice practice days and we will have time to work on things that we need to do for that game. We need our defense to play smarter, keeping the players on the outside and not letting them cut to the inside. We’ll be working with the forwards on the continuous process of making them break the puck out better and give them more time to work together as a line.
”The practices have been few and far between. Right now we’ve been playing quite a few games. So the on ice practice days this week will be good for us. It’s a good recovery week for us to refocus instead of bouncing from one game to the next.”
While Minter will be drilling the players in the technical aspects all week, he has no concern over his players’ ability to be mentally prepared.
”They understand (how important the game is) and they’re confident about it,” he said. “That’s always good that morale is high. They’ve been focused on this game since the loss to South.
”It gets to be more on them than on us at this point. They know where they have to be and it’s up to them to build up their own comfort playing as a team. We’ve pretty much gotten everything through, now it’s just the little things we’re working on.”