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Southwest Ohio Hockey Check

By Lee. W. Mowen, 02/11/20, 1:15PM EST

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It's Conference Tournament Week!

Dayton, OHIO – It’s conference tournament time! The Southwest Ohio High School Hockey League Tournament, and Capital Hockey Conference’s Blue Jackets Cup, kick off shortly after the State Playoff draw.

            In the SWOHSHL, the tournament is scheduled slightly differently this year. With the St. Xavier Bombers taking off to the Capital and LaSalle no longer having a varsity team, there are only eight teams in one bracket of this tournament. Instead of a Red and Gold Bracket running separately (with the first-place team of the Gold battling in the Red as the sixth seed to even the brackets out), there’s only one bracket with all eight teams. The Red Division get the 1st through 4th seeds, whereas the Gold Division teams are placed 5th through 8th.

            The SWOHSHL Tournament begins this Thursday at 8:00 p.m. at the Northland Ice Center in Cincinnati, as the Centerville Elks battle the Sycamore Aves. The Elks get the fourth seed as the fourth-place finishers in the Red Division; Aves are the Gold Division winners. Both teams have picked up a win in their previous two meetings, as Centerville took a 5-4 decision at the DiPaolo Tournament at Miami. Sycamore took the contest at Sports Plus, 6-3, scoring four goals in the last four minutes of regulation.

            Talawanda, with a perfect 9-0 run through league play, has the #1 seed and will face the #8 Elder Panthers on Valentine’s Day at 6:00 p.m. back at Northland. The Brave defeated the Panthers at home, 7-0, in their only matchup for the season.

            Two more matches will be played at South Metro Sportsplex on Valentine’s Day, as the second-seeded Beavercreek Beavers tangle with the #7 Troy Trojans at 6:30 p.m. Afterwards, it will be a match-up of #3 Alter facing off with #6 Mason.

The Beavers only dropped a pair of conference decisions, both to Team Talawanda. Beavercreek took down Troy, 17-0, as part of the Mayors’ Cup battle at South Metro, but also picked up a 9-0 win over the Trojans at the Miami Valley Freeze Tournament in Miami County. The Alter Knights picked up an 11-2 home win over the Comets in January in their lone match-up.

            The Tournament continues on Saturday the 15th at Northland, with the winners of Talawanda/Elder and Centerville/Sycamore dueling first at 4:00 p.m., then the second Semi-Final of Beavercreek/Troy and Alter/Mason goes. The Championship battle is scheduled for Sunday at 4:00 p.m. at Northland.

            Yours truly will be broadcasting all but one of these games on YouTube, either at youtube.com/CentervilleElksHockey or youtube.com/SouthMetroSports.

            In the Capital Hockey Conference, the final weekend of the regular season placed the final puzzle pieces into both the Blue Jackets Cup Championship and Consolation brackets. All Red Division teams make the Championship bracket, plus the top three White Division schools.

            The Moeller Crusaders (11-14-3-0; 8-5-1-1 in CHC play) were the only non-Columbus team to make the Championship bracket. As a reward for being the last team in, the Fighting Crusaders get #1 Upper Arlington. The Golden Bears ran through thirty-one games without a single defeat on the season and ranked the second-best team in Ohio, second only to four-time defending state champion Saint Ignatius. In the only match-up on the year, Upper Arlington handed Moeller a 4-1 defeat at the Ice Haus.

            St. Xavier, in their first year in the CHC, finished league play at 9-7 with the same amount of points as their Cincinnatian foes from Moeller. The #9 Bombers get either #17 Dublin Scioto or #18 Saint Francis DeSales. The Bombers took down both squads in the regular season, with an 11-0 win in Dublin against the Irish and a home 16-0 triumph over DeSales.

            Springboro gets the 11th seed in the Blue Jackets Cup, drawing #14 Columbus Academy. The Panthers took down the Vikings at the Easton Chiller, 2-0, before the turn of the decade.

            For the Crusaders, Bombers, and Panthers, all three of their games will be at the Ice Haus right beside Nationwide Arena. Moeller tangles with Upper Arlington Thursday at 7:00 p.m.; Springboro has a 6:00 p.m. puck drop on Friday, with St. Xavier following at 8:00 p.m. Most of these games will be at the Ice Haus, with only a handful at the Chiller North, Chiller Dublin, and the Ice Works in Worthington.

The Championships for both brackets happen at the Ice Haus Sunday afternoon, with the Consolation championship rolling first at 2:00.

            Don’t forget, the State Playoff draw is Wednesday the 12th!

 

--- Lee W. Mowen for Ohio Hockey Digest