Despite loss, St. Mary's has a bright future ahead of it

By BENJAMIN SZILAGY
Special to The Oakland Press

PLYMOUTH – Orchard Lake St. Mary's hasn't been to the state finals since 2008, when it battled Marquette to a 1-1 tie, and Saturday's visit to Compuware wasn't exactly what they had hoped for.

The Eaglets (19-11), who finished fifth in the MIHL, are used to facing tough opponents and Novi proved to be much of the same.

“They're as good as anybody we've faced,” St. Mary's head coach Brian Klanow said. “They're well coached and play a good disciplined system and have guys who can put the puck in the net. They're a great team.”

Even though St. Mary's didn't complete the goal of bringing home the state championship, losing 4-0 to Novi – who brought home the school's first hockey state championship on Saturday – it is still proud of what it accomplished this year.

“It was a great season for us,” Klanow boasted. “Looking back on our scores this year, I thought to myself ‘how can anybody count this team out?' If you look at the scores, we only really had two games, outside of if they got an empty netter – that were not one-goal game losses. That tells me we were in everything despite a couple of bad bounces here and there, and we put close to seven more wins in the win column.

“We're a very good team with some very strong young talent. We're going to be very young next year, but we're going to be very good, too.”

The Eaglets – who graduate 11 seniors, including major contributors Trevor Bardallis and Connor Lyons – feel they still have a solid nucleus to set up for another state title run next season.

“We have a great nucleus coming back, and we have a lot of good young kids to draw from in the junior varsity program, which has been a great feeder for us (in the past),” Klanow said.

St Mary's bring back 14 players from this year's state finalist team next season. And, with an influx from their junior varsity program, Klanow says the road to next season begins next week.

“We won't think about this tomorrow,” Klanow said with a smile. “But, we'll go back to work on Monday so we're here again next year.”

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