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Girls Tier I 14U Notebook: Battling for the top spot

By Jayson Hron, 04/06/18, 4:15AM MDT

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Game of the Day

They might be a No. 12 seed, but the Philadelphia Junior Flyers Tier I 14U girls are putting a scare into their Liberty Pool competition. Yesterday, in their tournament opener, the Junior Flyers stunned fifth-seeded Little Caesars 4-2. Today, they carried play against the fourth-seeded Chicago Young Americans, but just couldn’t crack goaltender Caroline Mower, who registered a 23-save shutout.

Deanna Buenzow, a 14-year-old Chicago Young Americans defenseman, combined with 13-year-old Greta Kropp to provide all the necessary offense midway through the first period. Buenzow gathered the puck deep in her own zone, circled behind the net, skated coast to coast, scooted past a Junior Flyers defenseman and then slid a centering pass to Kropp, who scored to make it 1-0.

“We’ve been working on quick-ups and transition a lot in practice, and driving around the d to the net, so I guess we did that,” said Kropp. “I kind of saw that Deanna was going around the d to maybe pass it out front, but I also knew that I just had to drive the net, because even if she didn’t pass, if she shoots it, there might be a rebound.”

She passed, Kropp finished, and the Young Americans had a lead they extended nine minutes later on a top-corner wrist shot from Sabrina Shvartsman. After that came two periods of frequent but futile puck possession for Philadelphia, which pushed hard for goals that never came.

It wasn’t exactly the path Chicago expected to skate en route to its second victory in two games.

“We just got too cocky or something,” said Kropp of the Young Americans’ struggle for possession. “We were two goals up and we thought like, ‘We’ve got this game,' but in reality, we really don’t. And we got locked in our zone a little bit, which was kind of scary.

“But it worked out in the end, and we realized we’ve got to keep playing until the end.”

Buenzow to Kropp for CYA's first goal

Other Action

East Coast Wizards (Massachusetts) 2, Detroit HoneyBaked 4 -- HoneyBaked and the East Coast Wizards see-sawed through 33 minutes of play before Madeline Miller and Jenna Carpenter struck for consecutive third-period goals to lift HoneyBaked to a 4-2 win. Riley Johnson and Grace Yarkosky both registered a pair of assists for HoneyBaked, which moved to 1-1 with the victory.

Mid-Fairfield Stars (Connecticut) 1, Minnesota Green Giants 5 -- Despite being whistled for eight penalties, the Minnesota Green Giants scored five straight goals before surrendering a lone tally to Mid-Fairfield in a 5-1 triumph. Gabby Krause and Peyton Hemp both scored twice for top-seeded Minnesota, which has outscored its opponents by a combined 16-1 in two victories thus far. 

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