St. Mary's opens playoff run with win over Farmington Hills Unified

By JEFF DULLACK
Special to The Oakland Press

ORCHARD LAKE — Every third year, the MHSAA state hockey playoffs open up on Orchard Lake St. Mary's head coach Brian Klanow's birthday. This year, the Eaglets gave Klanow a win over the Farmington Hills Unified Flyers, 3-0, in a Division 1 pre-regional opener.

After getting out to a slow start in the first period, the Eaglets turned up the pressure in the second period, firing 15 shots on net.

St. Mary's senior defenseman Dan Milan hammered home the first goal of the game in the middle of traffic during an Eaglet power play 11:12 into the second period.

"That was big, we needed something to break the ice," said Klanow on the importance of the goal by Milan. Klanow also added that the Eaglets got a good test from Farmington and that his team needs to come out stronger in the first period in upcoming games.

"That kind of got things going, and I thought that (Farmington) played as well as they could and their goaltender played very good. I mean we put 38 shots on him tonight, so hats off to them. They had a good season. We have to come out a little stronger. We were a little slow in the first period and then we picked it up.”

In the later stages of the third period, St Mary's was still clinging to a narrow 1-0 lead when senior forward Alex Zerbo picked up a loose puck in the Farmington end for a break away. Zerbo put a quick move on Farmington goalie Michael Brown, and put the puck in five-hole to give his team some much needed breathing room.

Klanow says that the second goal of the game not only gave St. Mary's some breathing room, but it allowed them to play more of a defensive game to help seal the victory.

“That second goal kind of set us up a little bit, and we could play more of a defensive game and focus on keeping the puck down low which is exactly what we did,” Klanow said.

Brown stood on his head for the Flyers for much of the game, keeping his team in the game and turning away several scoring chances, to go along with 36 saves in the game.

Farmington Unified was the co-champion of the OAA Red division in the regular season.

“I think Michael put together an All-State caliber performance tonight,” said Flyers head coach Ken Anderson on the performance he got from the senior goalie. “When we needed him to step up with a big save, he did it just about every time. It was nice to see, I'm really proud of Michael.”

As time ticked down inside 40 seconds remaining, senior forward Cody Loyer scored an empty net goal to ice the game for the Eaglets.

St. Mary's junior goaltender Joseph Janiga turned away all 12 shots he faced to earn the shutout.

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