Strath Haven took its first steps into the Flyers Cup pool Monday night, and emerged to fight another day. Michael Leuthold’s goal with 12:30 left in the third period proved to be decisive as the Panthers bested Moorestown 2-1 Monday night in a Class A Flyers Cup play-in game at Hatfield Ice Arena.
The 13th-seeded Panthers (5-13-2) will have little time to celebrate their victory; they’ll be back in action against fifth-seeded Kennett (6:30 at Ice Line) in a first-round game.
Going into the game, Strath Haven coach John Gavin anticipated that goals would be few, if only because his own team scored just 33 goals in 19 games prior to Monday night. He also knew that his goaltender Jacob Aranda was taking the ice with a .904 aver percentage.
“Given our goaltending, I knew their goaltending was strong, given how the stats played out, I figured that was the type of game we were going to have.
Primo Modesti gave Strath Haven a 1-0 lead when he beat Quakes netminder David Rho midst of a scramble in front of the net with 2:52 left in the first period.
As the game played out, it seemed one goal might be enough. Quality shots were rare, both goaltenders were sharp and physicality was minimal.
Michael Leuthold extended the Strath Haven lead 4:30 into the final period.
Jakub Brazina cut the deficit in half at the 7:15 mark but that was the only one of 41 Moorestown shots that Aranda could corral.
Gavin, naturally enough, celebrated the performance of his goaltender.
“It was a great win for the boys,” he said. “We got great goaltending from Jacob, who is a senior for us, who was great for us all night.
“We got two big goals that we desperately needed and now we have a big game {Tuesday} against Kennett.”
Gavin noted that his team avoided the breakdowns and errors that take a team out of a single-elimination tournament.
“We usually do a pretty good job with that,” he said. “Our struggle has been scoring goals. We’ve been working on the power play and I was hoping maybe tonight we’d get a power-play goal. We definitely generated some chances off of that I think led to momentum and scoring at even strength.
There were just five penalties called in the game, four of them against Moorestown The Panthers wound up with three power-play chances, one of them lasting four minutes but were outshot 41-26 for the evening.
Strath Haven 1 0 1—2
Moorestown 0 0 1—1
First-period goals: Primo Modesti (SH) from Carson Farrington, 14:08
Third-period goals: Michael Leuthold (SH) from Christian Henzel, 4:30; Hunter Orr (M) from Jakub Brazina and Charles Hartzell, 7:15
Shots: Strath Haven 26, Moorsetown 41 Saves: Jacob Aranda (SH) 40, David Rho (M) 24
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