Orchard Lake St. Mary’s falls to Houghton in Division 3 final
PLYMOUTH TOWNSHIP — Having a roster chock full of marquee players wasn’t a fitting description for Novi Detroit Catholic Central’s hockey team this winter. The Shamrocks entered last weekend’s finals tournament at Plymouth’s U.S.A. Hockey Arena as one of only two squads without a 20-goal scorer.
But no matter. The Shamrocks got the job done in a 6-0 whitewashing of local rival Northville, earning their seventh consecutive MHSAA Division 1 state title. Catholic Central got its goals from six different players and a strong effort in the defensive end, which limited Northville from making many serious scoring threats.
“Yeah, that’s been our 'm.o.' all year,” head coach Brandon Kaleniecki said. “One of the biggest things about our team is we’ve been able to spread out our scoring; different guys each night. That’s the way we approached it — it didn’t matter who’s doing the scoring.”
After playing in a scoreless draw for much of the first period, Luke Perdue gave Catholic Central a 1-0 lead with 2:16 to play in the opening period. A couple of defensemen, Sam Masek and Myles Schlack, added tallies in the second period. More goals by Eian Szerlip, Lucas Szmagaj and Kristian Marchese in the third turned the contest into a rout.
“I know a couple of defensemen got on the scoreboard tonight. One of our guys who might be considered fourth-line on the depth chart scored a big goal,” Kaleniecki said. “That’s how we are as a team, and that’s been a big part of our success.”
Six goals. Six scorers. And that list doesn’t include Gabe Thompson, who led the team in goals during the regular season (18); Ryan Dye, who had the most assists (25); or Jack Dorgan, Jacob Ryner, Costa Karadimas, Anthony DiPonio, who all contributed goals during Friday’s semifinal rout of Rockford.
“That’s
kind of the way we want to play,” said Dye, one of the team’s four captains.
“We want to push (opposing) teams onto their heels — that’s how you get shots
and you keep teams in their D-zone.”
Catholic Central outshot Northville, 47-15, allowing goalie Nick Kogut to earn a shutout while playing in his first championship final. Kogut was quick to credit his teammates for limiting the Mustangs’ chances.
“They’re great,” he said. “I can’t do what I do without them. Even the forwards, they’re all so defensively sound and they make it easy for me. That’s something that coach has been telling us all year to do, and they’ve really been the best at it.”
With a lot of graduation turnover from the 2024-25 state championship squad, it took the Shamrocks some time to find their identity this season. They fell out of the top spot in the state rankings after losing a Nov. 19 game to Hartland. Howell beat Hartland the following week to claim the top spot for the remainder of the regular season. But CC dealt Howell its only two losses this winter, in the first game of the year (4-3) and in the quarterfinal (1-0) on Feb. 28.
“It was not a year that was going to be, ‘Just show up and dominate’ from the get-go to the end,” Kaleniecki said. “We knew that there were going to be some challenges. We knew that it was going to be a bit of a building experience as the year goes on, just going little by little. To the kids’ credit, they kept chugging along.”
“We believed, really,” Kogut said. “Our coaches instilled in us that we’re going to get the other team’s best every single day, and we’ve just got to play through that, and we’ve got to have our best game every day. There’s really no off days, and we worked hard at practice and kept it going.”
Despite the final outcome, Kaleniecki said this year’s team was different because they faced some adversity.
“The record sounds great, whatever it ended up being (29-1-1), but there were a lot of challenges along the way, and these guys rose to the occasion and got better until the end,” he said. “Obviously I love the way we played down the stretch.”
Nor did Kaleniecki compare this win to the other six — a steak that started with a 3-1 victory over Saginaw Heritage in the 2019 title game.
“It’s awesome; I think each one’s special in its own way,” he said. “We try not to look at the numbers in a row — each year is its own special team and that’s what makes it so fun for us.”
St. Mary’s falls short in its repeat bid
For a brief moment Saturday, it looked like Orchard Lake St. Mary’s was on its way to defending its state title from 2025. Behind goals from Thaddeus Raynish and Dominic Pizzo, the Eaglets had overcome an early deficit and clawed back to grab a 2-1 lead over Houghton early in the third period of the Division 3 title game.
But Houghton erupted for four goals down the stretch, defeating St. Mary’s 5-2 to win its first state title since 1982.
“Obviously that (first goal) got us going, it got us tied 1-1 so everyone was fired up, and then we had the go-ahead goal, which made it 2-1,” head coach Brian Klanow said, “but I thought we kind of sat back and rested on our laurels a little bit, and it certainly cost us.”
It took Houghton’s Jack Sayen just 42 seconds to answer with a game-tying goal, and when Sayen nudged another into the St. Mary’s net following a scramble in the goal mouth two minutes after that, the Gremlins (25-6-1) had all the momentum on their side.
“They’re a really good, hard-working team,” Klanow said. “I think we got a little lax down low in front of our net, and they took advantage of some not-so-good positioning, and they were able to get some shots off and they went in. They did a really good job in ‘the house.’ That’s where they scored a lot of their goals from. They beat us in the area where we needed to be a lot stronger, down in that house.”
Sayen finished with four goals, tying the state record for a championship-game performance with three other players.
St. Mary’s finished 25-5-0 after being top-ranked in Division 3 for most of the season.
“We had a great year,” Klanow said. “I don’t think in the playoffs we had played our best hockey, but it was a great year. This was a special team. Just the group of kids we had — they’re hard-working on the ice, hard-working in the classroom; they’re super young men.”
In Friday’s semi-final, St. Mary’s defeated a fellow Catholic League team, Grosse Pointe Woods University-Liggett, 7-2, netting five goals in the second period.
U of D Jesuit makes strong run to semifinals
Despite a less-than-stellar regular-season record, University of Detroit Jesuit was the Cinderella team of the tournament, advancing into the Division 2 semifinals.
Domenic Recchia’s Cubs squad was 10-15 in the regular campaign, but won its regional with wins over Bloomfield Hills Brother Rice (6-3) and Dexter (3-1), before upsetting Trenton in the quarterfinal in a 4-3 overtime thriller.
Uof D Jesuit was finally knocked out of the tournament one step short of the championship contest, falling 3-0 to Flint Powers Catholic. The Cubs — who have never appeared in an MHSAA final game — could not muster a lot of offense against the top-ranked Chargers, getting outshot 35-13 while Powers scored single goals in each period.
Powers went on to win the Division 2 championship with a 4-0 victory Saturday over Livonia Stevenson — the Chargers’ third title in four seasons.
