St. Clair Shores wins 2015 USA Hockey 16U Tier II national title

By @SKubus –

The Saint Clair Shores Saints captured the 2015 USA Hockey 16U Tier II National Championship Monday afternoon at the Dr. Pepper StarCenter in Plano, Texas, defeating Hyland Hills (Colorado) by a 4-1 final.

Joey Tabbi recorded two goals and an assist, Kevin Maddox had a goal and an assist, while Noah Cyr chipped in with the other goal. Robert Kowalczyk turned aside 33 of 34 shots between the pipes in the victory.

For a team whose goal was to win the national title from the start, head coach Matt Romaniski said it may have been more relieving above any other emotions once that final buzzer sounded.

“I think it was just a lot of hard work that paid off,” Romaniski said. “They boys played terrific, so probably the best emotion is, I was excited for the boys. They deserved it, they worked hard all year. We’ve asked them go above and beyond.”

The championship crown caps off a 5-0 run for the Saints after dropping their opening game to a Jaguars team from New Jersey, 2-1. After that first loss, where Romaniski said the team was snake-bitten offensively, the team gathered for a meeting to regroup and refresh for the next game.

“We couldn’t score and we hit the post and I think we were relieved that that happened in game one,” Romaniski said of the offensive struggle. “We didn’t want that to happen in the semi-final game or the finals, something like that, so we got a bad game out of our system and then the boys focused.

“We had a team meeting, just focused about, ‘Hey, look, we get knocked down, we’ve got to get right back up, we’re still in this. It’s gonna be a tough tourney to keep coming,’ so we were able to overcome that first game. It probably helped us focus a little bit throughout the tournament, which is probably a good thing.”

In their six games, the Saints only allowed one goal in each of them except for one. St. Clair Shores went on to top the North Pittsburgh Wildcats, 2-1; the South Shore Kings, 7-5; the Orange County Hockey Club, 4-1 and Team Toledo, 5-1, before triumphing in the championship.

“Both our goalies played terrific,” Romaniski said. “They both stepped up for us and had great games. Defensively, as a team, we always kind of say five guys play defense and five guys play offense, so it was a great team effort defensively. Defense did their job and forwards back-checked hard, and we were able to get pucks up and out of our zone and transition fast, and lead to our offense. That’s been our game plan all year.”

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Tabbi led the tournament with nine goals – scoring at least once in each game – and 12 points in six games. That’s coming from a player who has only been with the Saints for two seasons and has only been playing ice hockey for three or four years. Tabbi is a converted roller hockey player, who has now earned himself a spot on a Midget Major AAA team next season.

“He’s been our leader, our best player all year,” Romaniski said. “The kid has put up numbers like that all year long. He’s been our go-to… Whenever we needed big goals, he scores the big ones for us, he gets big assists, he kills all our penalties, he’s a go-to guy and he had another two goals and an assist in the championship today, so we kind of go as Joey goes.”