Eagles Fly Again: Valor Christian flies to 5A hockey state championship

DENVER – In the George Gwozdecky guide to winning championships, the veteran hockey coach has a new chapter to write. But just reading the words would have one believing they pulled something from the fiction shelves.

An own-goal 10 seconds into the game and two short-handed scores.

Sometimes a guy just has to get creative to start things out.

By the time Andrew Jenkins scored Valor’s fourth goal of the first period – a ho-hum even-strength gaol from a shot off his own stick – a cloud of fate had settled over the crowd at Magness Arena.

But then Poudre School District woke up. The Stars scored three goals in the second period to Valor’s one. But it wasn’t enough.

The Eagles went on to win the Class 5A hockey state championship, beating PSD 7-4. It’s the fourth hockey title for Valor, all of which have come under the watch of Gwozdecky.

“I don’t know if anybody could have predicted that,” Gwozdecky said. “It definitely was a strange start to the first period for us. In a good way.”

After taking 51 minutes and nine seconds to score their only goal in the semifinal win over Monarch on Saturday at Ed Robson Arena, it took just 10 seconds for the Eagles to get on the board at Magness. Granted, a puck played into Valor’s offensive zone by Ronan Hirschfield was misplayed by the Stars and ended up in the net, but it was a fast start regardless.

Things only got stranger when Valor’s Dawson Charles got called for tripping and the Eagles responded with short-handed goals by Elijah Fischer and Hirschfield.

Jenkins added one more before the end of the first period, giving Valor about as much momentum as a team could hope for to start a game.

“We couldn’t get comfortable,” Jenkins said. “Poudre is a very good team. They scored two goals in the last five minutes of the semifinals against Creek. You can’t get on your heels against that team because they’ll smack you right in the face.”

Dylan Hice and Landon Salmela finally gave PSD a sign of life, scoring goals within four minutes of each other to cut the lead to 4-2. Bauer Bodhaine got one back for the Eagles, but Weston Nerby got the Stars back to within two on a power play with 6:25 to play in the second.

If first period was unorthodox, the second period was fun fast-break hockey.

But even with that pace and a sense of normalcy returning, Valor was happy to get to the locker room so they could settle in for an important third period.

“Sometimes you’re happy to have intermission so you can regroup and that was one of those times,” Gwozdecky said. “We wanted to get to intermission as quickly as we could so we could talk about it.”

And they got settled back in. They allowed just one goal for Poudre in the third, and that came after Jenkins scored the third short-handed goal for Valor with 4:23 left. He doubted a hat trick of shorties was on anyone’s bingo card.

“I don’t think so,” Jenkins said. “But we’ve scored a lot of short-handed goals this year and we’re grateful we were able to do that.”

Without those, this game could have ended with a very different result. But Valor was the best offensive team in 5A all season and the ability to score while a man down on the ice is the reason they claimed a fourth state championship.