Facing a team it had already lost to four times within two weeks, a Juneau Capitals 16-and-under A Division squad turned back its Anchorage rival, 3-1, to claim an Alaska State Hockey Association championship March 5-7 in Anchorage.<\/p>\n
Representing the Juneau Douglas Ice Association, the Capitals had twice lost to the Anchorage Comets in the three-day tournament, but qualified for the title game by defeating Fairbanks twice in the round-robin play. The Capitals suffered two 4-1 losses before meeting the Comets again, this time for the title to close out the tournament.<\/p>\n
Already missing two key defensemen to injuries, the Capitals withstood periods of relentless attacks and converted critical opportunities to hold off the Comets, returning home with a champions’ trophy.<\/p>\n
Juneau received balanced scoring, including an unassisted, second-period, game-winner by defenseman Luke Bovitz. Caden Johns helped the Capitals to a first-period lead with assists from Gabe Hansen and Sonny Monsef, who later put the game out of reach with Juneau’s third goal with 6 minutes to play.<\/p>\n
The victory ended a four-game skid against the Comets, who also twice defeated the Capitals at the February Presidents Day Invitational in Anchorage.<\/p>\n
“This team adjusting, making corrections, and fighting through adversity throughout the entire tournament is everything you like to see as a coach,” said Mike Bovitz, who, along with Kevin Hansen, coached the team.<\/p>\n
Three Juneau goalies Mason Sooter, Cookie Murphy and Caleb Friend collectively held opponents to 13 goals spanning five games. Murphy produced the team’s lone shutout in a 1-0 victory over Fairbanks. Sooter recorded 22 saves in the championship game.<\/p>\n
The goalie trio received critical front line help from defensemen Bovitz, Hansen, Minta Schwartz and Dane Pederson.<\/p>\n
“Going into tournament with three goalies is a unique situation,” Bovitz said. “The goalies were well prepared, played well, and did exactly what was needed to complete the task: Giving the team a chance to win State.<\/p>\n
In a tightly contested tournament, Juneau produced 14 hard-fought goals. Leading the scoring were Monsef (two goals, six assists), Johns (five goals, two assists) and Bovitz (two goals, five assists).<\/p>\n
The Capitals got additional production from Matthew Plang (two goals, one assist), Busby West (two goals) and Lake Bartlett (one goal, one assist), Other forwards contributing offensive support were: Xavier Meloncon and Marzena Whitmore.<\/p>\n
“Watching this team having fun with the games while working hard, and then to have this success, that was an awesome experience for us all,” Bovitz said.<\/p>\n
Scores:<\/strong><\/p>\n Anchorage 4, Juneau 1<\/p>\n Juneau 1, Fairbanks 0<\/p>\n Anchorage 4, Juneau 1<\/p>\n Juneau 8, Fairbanks 4<\/p>\n Juneau 3, Anchorage 1<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Team faced tough competition from an oft-faced foe. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":106,"featured_media":84323,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_stopmodifiedupdate":false,"_modified_date":"","wds_primary_category":6,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-84322","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/84322","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/106"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=84322"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/84322\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/84323"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=84322"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=84322"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=84322"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=84322"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}