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MONTGOMERY: Ice Hockey Player of the Year

Schiavo heats up for Cougars’ run

By Justin Feil, Assistant Sports Editor
   Rob Scarpa never doubted that his Montgomery High School ice hockey team would get good goaltending this year.
   Zach Schiavo had been in the Cougars program for three years, he even grew up in Montgomery, but he had only a fleeting moment on varsity to make an impact. He had played JV as a freshman and made only two starts on varsity before shutting out Hillsborough in the Skyland Conference Tournament semifinals in a shootout.
   ”We definitely saw enough in the semifinals of the conference tournament,” Scarpa said. “It takes a little time to get used to starting, but we knew in big games, he was able to step in and play at a high level.
   ”We felt good about our goaltending. We had other pressing issues.”
   Like the defense in front of Schiavo. Between the four top defensemen, only one had played a varsity season. There were rough patches early for Schiavo and his defense.
   ”I feel like I definitely improved my game towards the end,” Schiavo said. “I had a little bit of a slow start to the season. Better for that to happen early than late. Towards the end, I started playing the way I usually expect myself to play.”
   Like a pitcher in the midst of a no-hitter, none of the Cougars talked about it when it was happening. But after the halfway point of the season, Schiavo started to carry Montgomery toward the state championship game, a place few would ever have expected of a team that graduated 13 seniors.
   ”He was able to hold it together in the beginning of the season until they came up,” Scarpa said. “As much as he picked the defense up, the defense picked him up too.
   ”It really takes a team to buy in and limit goals. You usually don’t make it to a state championship giving up more than two goals a game. You have to limit their chances and counter-attack. That’s what we were able to do a little better in the second half than first half.”
   The wins began to pile up behind the proverbial hot goaltender.
   ”By the time we got to the state tournament, he was playing really well,” Scarpa said. “After giving up a lot of goals in the second game against Pingry, he went on a really good run. We went 10-2 from there.
   ”We really improved drastically over the last part of the season. We never had a two-game losing streak.”
   The Cougars reached the Skyland final, then put together a run to the state final. To get there, Schiavo made 29 saves in the second round, his fourth shutout in six games at the time. He allowed just one goal in a quarterfinals win over rival Hillsborough. Schiavo then made 62 saves, including 19 in overtime and all four chances in the shootout he faced against Morris Knolls, to help the Cougars make the state final.
   In the state championship, he made another 36 saves before Randolph scored the only goal of the game. The Cougars finished 21-8, one win more than they had a year ago, on their way to their second state finals appearance in program history.
   Schiavo finished the season with a 2.10 goals against average. That total would be considerably lower if not for the 20 goals that Pingry scored against the Cougars this season. Schiavo saved 92 percent of the shots he faced, but his saves down the stretch were the ones that counted the most.
   ”It’s a whole different mentality starting and putting the team on your back and carrying them,” Scarpa said. “We had full faith that he could step in and do the job.”
   Zach Schiavo is the Princeton Packet Ice Hockey Player of the Year.
   ”I kind of wanted to go out and play my best and show everyone what I could do,” Schiavo said. “It was great to be given the opportunity to be able to do something.”
   Schiavo had waited a long time for this chance. He had been a goalie almost since the day he started playing the game.
   ”I think I played forward in an in-house league for about a year,” said Schiavo, who grew up in Montgomery. “All through that, I kind of begged to be a goalie. My parents finally gave in and let me play. They wanted me to try the other positions.”
   Schiavo studied the best goalies, and he tried to pattern himself after a certain New Jersey Devils standout.
   ”I’m not a full butterfly goalie, like most goalies are taught to be,” Schiavo said. “I learned how to play it from watching Martin Brodeur all these years. I tried to copy his style. I tried to do that as best as he could. I try to be a hybrid goalie instead of the tradition goalie.
   ”It means in certain situations, I won’t go all the way down. I’ll stay up and wait longer. I’ll cheat over to one side where I’m not as good. I try to give myself the best opportunity to stop the puck.”
   Adopting that style may have been the best decision of his career, as it gave him a unique style that could make things hard on opponents.
   ”He’s very good at baiting kids into thinking they have something they don’t,” Scarpa said. “His reaction time is impressive. He’s able to take away what the shooter thought he had. He’d bait a shooter into going for a spot that he could take away. He doesn’t get rattled. That served him well, especially in the shootout against Morris Knolls.”
   The Cougars didn’t allow a slow start to the season to rattle them either. Even though there were so many new parts, MHS stuck together to build into a state finalist.
   ”We all believed in each other,” Schiavo said. “We all supported each other from Day One. There was a very positive attitude in the locker room and that definitely helped.
   ”It was obviously a tremendous season. Making it all the way to the finals is no small feat. A lot of people were thinking it wasn’t going to be like this this year, especially after we lost so many seniors. The team, we made it an issue to get to this point. Although we lost, we still had a tremendous season.”
   Schiavo was happy to be a big part of it. He had waited for his chance to play for three years.
   ”It’s obviously a little frustrating,” he said. “If you play the game, you obviously want to be in those big games. You want to play as much as possible. All in all, it was still fun to be there and be a part of the team. The guys, they were still great about treating me as an equal member of the team even though I was a back-up.”
   Schiavo’s graduation leaves David Starkman as the only goalie in the MHS program. Starkman has been in the program for three years, but it was Schiavo’s turn to shine this year.
   ”I know exactly how he’s probably feeling all year,” Schiavo said. “He’s a great guy. You can tell that he’s genuinely happy for everything that was happening all year long. I have no doubts that he’ll try his best next year.”
   For Schiavo, next year holds the prospects of trying to catch on with a Juniors team, or going off to college. It will be tough to top the near perfect ending to Zach Schiavo’s Montgomery career.
   ”Overall, it was a nice way to go out,” he said. “To be able to start every game and make it all the way to the finals. It definitely allows me to leave high school now feeling I have no regrets.”