1980 Chamness leads Carroll past Ryan

The Shot came into Penn’s Class of 1923 Rink last night, his stick trailing the sparks of a 69-goal season. Everywhere he goes, The Shot is followed by shadows, stalked by defenders, dogged by opponents. It’s part of being the greatest scorer in area scholastic hockey history. And 29 seconds into the final period of last night’s Flyers Cup opener. Scott (The Shot) Chamness showed why he gets so much attention. With Archbishop Carroll trailing. 4-3, Chamness broke down the right sideline, wound up from the top of the circle and crushed the puck. Dave Parker can’t hit a baseball any harder. The puck billowed in the upper left corner of the net, the breeze waffling Archbishop Ryan goaltender John Stella. Carroll went on from that devastating shot to score four more unanswered third-period goals and subdue Ryan, 8-4, in the first game of last night’s elimination round. Chamness scored four goals and assisted on two others, as Carroll advanced to the Flyers Cup championship round. Carroll and Malvern Prep will begin a best-of-three series at 7 tonight at Penn. Malvern Prep (214) blew a two-goal lead in the third period of the second game, but rallied in overtime to eliminate Germantown Academy. 4-3. The loss was the first this year for Ryan (21-1), the champions of the Lower Bucks County League. But the Raiders, who had been ranked No. 3 in The Inquirer’s Top 10, made No. 1 Carroll sweat heavily until Chamness cranked up his howitzer. Carroll took a 2-0 lead in the first period and seemed about to glide through the game. Then Ryan shocked the Patriots with four straight goals in the second period. “Their coach must have told them to wear us down by dumping the puck in,” Chamness said.

“They made our defensemen skate twice as hard. We couldn’t break out… they kept us in our own end the whole period. No one in our league (the Inter-County) plays that way, and the coaches didn’t have a chance to correct it until between periods.” But the score that may have won the game for Carroll was a plain, ordinary, muck-it-up-in-the-corners goal by, naturally, Scott Chamness. In the waning seconds of the second period, with Ryan skating brilliantly and leading, 4-2, the puck rolled loose near the blue line. Freshman center Jeff Arnold kept the puck from leaving the offensive zone and shot. Stella made the save, but Chamness took it away from a Ryan defenseman and scored with 1:01 left in the period. That cut Ryan’s lead to 4-3 and set the stage for Carroll’s five-goal explosion in the final period. Gump Whiteside’s electifying goal with 2 seconds left in the game earned Germantown Academy a 3-3 tie and forced Malvern into overtime. But Scott lanelli’s goal 6:55 into sudden death won it for Malvern, the runner-up to Carroll in the Inter-County League. Malvern had taken a 2-0 lead behind Mike lacobucci and Al Washco, but Germantown Academy cut the margin on a goal by eighth-grader John Hopkinson. Steve DiBacco’s goal raised Malvern’s margin to 3-1, but GA’s Dave Jones cut it back to one on a power play and set the stage for Whiteside’s late (and wasted) heroics.