Steamboat Springs had the winning recipe right on Monday night.
Two goals in 12 seconds. Five-for-five on the penalty kill. And a five-hole dagger of a lamp-lighter to cement the Sailors’ 4-2 Class 4A title victory over Glenwood Springs, giving the school its first team championship since 1998.
About 160 miles away from that feat, where the game at Magness Arena was being streamed at Steamboat Springs High School and at the town’s ice rink, the residents of “The Boat” were going wild for an athletic achievement that hadn’t been achieved since the last millennium.
“My phone has been blowing up,” Steamboat Springs head coach Brian Ripley said as his players celebrated on the University of Denver’s ice. “To know what this means to our town is awesome, and the support we’ve received is unbelievable.”
While the Sailors’ girls soccer team won the Class 3A crown in ’98, the last Steamboat Springs boys team to claim a title was track in ’91. So Monday’s victory was a long time coming, and was made even sweeter by the fact that the No. 2-seeded Sailors lost twice to No. 1 Glenwood Springs earlier in the season by a combined score of 7-1.
“We didn’t play our best those first two games, but we brought it tonight, and we won the game that mattered,” goalie Jakob Ducklow said. “We kept the intensity all the way through the game, and we kept grinding through moments of adversity.”
Both goalies opened the game strong. Ducklow turned away several Demons chances, while Issac Zevin matched him on the other end of the ice. In the middle of the period, Ducklow made a series of impressive saves on point-blank shots to keep the game scoreless.
The Sailors finally broke the stalemate with 6:27 left in the period. In a two-on-one breakaway, Sawyer Vietanen’s wrister to the top left shelf made it 1-0.
Steamboat Springs proceeded to kill two penalties at the end of the period, then the majority of another two-minute penalty early in the second period. But the Demons came out with a different edge to open the second and evened the game two and a half minutes into the frame via captain Jacob Roggie’s goal.
“We let off the gas a little bit at the start of the second period,” Ducklow said. “So we needed to get back on it after that goal. And we did.”
The Sailors stole the momentum right back. Gavin Wittlinger won a faceoff in the offensive zone, and the puck immediately found Austin Shorland, who skated to the middle of the ice, then to the right of Zevin and beat him with an impressive backhand wrister to the top right shelf at the 10:13 mark.
A dozen seconds later, Wittlinger gave Steamboat Springs a two-goal lead, and suddenly Glenwood Springs was playing with its back to the wall. The Demons picked up their pace. Brady Luetke responded for the Demons with a slick wraparound goal with 1:34 left in the period, as the puck bounced off Ducklow’s leg pad and in to make it 3-2.
“Throughout the playoffs, we’ve had the mentality that we have to push back when bad things occur,” Ripley said. “Those two goals were such a momentum shift. You could sense in the kids after that, that we believed we could actually get this done, even after we gave up one late (in the second).”
In the third, Steamboat Springs nearly tallied a shorthanded goal when Zander Harvey got a clean look in front of the net, but Zevin stopped it. The final 10 minutes were frantic, but Ducklow and the Steamboat Springs defense held up in the face of intense pressure.
With 6:34 left, Glenwood Springs went on the power play for the fifth time. But with the help of a few saves by Ducklow, the Sailors killed it again.
Then Steamboat Springs cemented the title with 3:03 left, as captain Angus Frithsen gained possession of the puck near mid-ice and skated past a couple of Demons defenders before beating Zevin with a wrister in the five-hole. That made it 4-2, and the celebration was on.
“I just shot it and prayed, and it went in,” Frithsen said.
With a snowstorm rolling in, the Sailors are staying in Denver on Monday to celebrate their title before heading back to town with their trophy on Tuesday.
Let the hotel party begin. After all, the Sailors haven’t been able to celebrate like this for 27 years.
“We’re going to have some fun tonight — not too much fun — but we’re going to have a really good time,” Ducklow said.
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