The Park City Red hockey team entered the postseason looking for another state title, and opened their latest postseason journey with a dominant 7-0 win over Alta Wednesday night at the Park City Ice Arena.
A couple of power play goals from Charlie Cusimano and a perfect penalty kill helped the Miners skate away with the shutout win. The Miners are set to play Juan Diego at home on Friday.
“We played pretty well,” Park City coach Mike Adamek said. “I think there was a little lull there second half of the first period, maybe first couple minutes of the second, where they kind of turned it up a little bit. I think we answered the bell pretty well and scored some big goals to kind of take the momentum out of their sails.”
Park City jumped out to a 1-0 lead early on a Garrett Hebert goal just a few minutes into the game. Hebert received a pass from behind the net and slotted a shot past the Alta netminder to open the scoring. A few minutes later, Cusimano doubled the Park City lead with a one-timer on the power play from near the faceoff dot down the right wing.
“Not used to being on the power play one, especially for high school, but just nice to bury a couple,” Cusimano said.
“On Cusimano’s first goal, we got them out of position, found him kind of not really backdoor, but in the high slot for a one-timer,” Adamek added. “Charlie’s going to score nine out of 10 of those.”
Special teams played a significant role in Park City’s win over Alta. In addition to finding the back of the net on the power play, the Miners successfully killed off several Alta penalties to preserve the shutout.
“Obviously, we killed off all the penalties,” Adamek said. “We killed off six or seven penalties. I think that kind of generated momentum. … We’re the most skilled team in the state, I know that. We should be dominant in the special teams area because that’s where skilled teams are better, right? I think we did that job tonight.”
Park City killed off a couple of penalties to end the first period and start the second, including a five-on-three opportunity for Alta. Although the Miners kept their opponent at bay while short a player or two on Thursday, Adamek would like to see his team take fewer penalties to begin with.
“For the most part, we’ve got to learn from killing seven penalties off in the first playoff game and not get into that,” he said. “We talked to our team beforehand about playing physical. If they’re going to start calling penalties on us for playing too physical, we’ve got to back off on that. I think we needed to make that adjustment earlier in the game.”
Park City made Alta pay for not taking advantage of its power-play opportunities by continuing to widen the gap in the second period. Cooper Ford forced a turnover just outside of Park City’s offensive zone and advanced toward the Alta net. Ford sniped a shot into the net to make it 3-0.
“I think everyone in the building saw them kind of relax a bit, they were starting to see that we’re taking it to them,” Adamek said. “That was kind of the backbreaker, in my opinion, that third goal. Even though we scored four more, I think the third one was really where we started to really take it to them a little bit.”
The game snowballed after that. Brooks Bezemer scored back-to-back goals for Park City. He found a rebound and jammed it into the net for his first goal, and he made it 5-0 late in the second period when he pounced on a loose puck near the net. Cusimano’s second power-play tally came less than 30 seconds into the final period.
“In power-play situations, you have the advantage, so we want to make sure that we don’t take that advantage away by putting pucks on people’s backhands,” Adamek said. “It’s a lot easier to play hockey when you’re using your forehand, and we’re trying to really focus on that and then trying to move pucks quickly so that we can find that open fifth guy.”
Park City added a seventh goal when Ian Marsland fed a pass to William Bock to complete the scoring. Miners goaltender Shane Smith earned the shutout on the night, and while he wasn’t tested often, he came up with some key saves to keep Alta off the scoresheet.
“A lot of times goaltending isn’t necessarily about making 25, 30 saves,” Adamek said. “It’s the timing of that save. We’re up 1-0, and they get a two-on-one and he makes a good save, like, that’s a big save. That counts for two or three saves, in my opinion.”
Spirits are high for Park City heading into the rest of the postseason. Wednesday night’s win is the start of another playoff run that the Miners hope will end in a state title.
“I just thought that we need to keep going throughout the playoffs, keep playing like this, playing complete games,” Cusimano said. “That’s pretty good tonight.”
“I’ve only been with these guys for a couple months now,” he added. “But I’ve already built a lot of good relationships, and it’s fun to win big games like this at our home arena.”