By Steve Siniski
Lynbrook advanced to the Long Island Class B championship game against Comsewogue on June 4, in a match-up the Owls lost, 11-4. (See story on Page 10).
Garden City (15-4) is a team with seven county titles under its belt but the team learned playoff wins rarely come easy. The Owls (13-5) led 5-2 until halfway through the fourth quarter when the Trojans tallied twice in a span of 1:16 to pull within one goal.
Though the Owls had controlled the play in Garden City territory for almost the entire game, the final 4 minutes and 30 seconds were anything but an exercise in running out the clock. After pulling within one goal, Garden City kept Lynbrook on the defensive until the final horn sounded, with goaltender Tommy Skartsiaris making a final, point-blank save as the clock reached 0:00.
Watching that clock tick down [in the final few minutes] was real slow, Lynbrook coach Larry Glenz said of Garden City's fourth quarter push. The guys are all thrilled, because when we sat down to look at what was ahead [in the playoffs], we certainly had a formidable task with MacArthur, Wantagh and Garden City. We don't think many people were giving us a chance.
Glenz seemed genuinely surprised by the final score of the game. If you would have told me that we would hold Garden City to just four goals, I wouldn't have thought we'd be able to do that if we played them 25 times.
Indeed, the Trojans scored at least 10 goals in 10 of their 17 games, but their offense was slowed to a crawl by Lynbrook's bend-but-don't-break zone defense that allowed just 15 goals in three Nassau County playoff games.
The goalie [Skartsiaris] gains confidence from the defense and the defense gains confidence from him, Glenz said. This was our best defensive effort so far.
All Skartsiaris was missing was a waffle and glove, because he certainly looked like a hockey goalie in Game 7 of the Stanley Cup finals. He had a pair of kick saves, stopped another shot with the end of his stick and also came up big on a turnover three feet in front of him. In all, the Lynbrook goalie stopped 10 of the 14 official shots he faced and even corralled several passes across his crease.
Tommy [Skartsiaris] has raised his level of play in the postseason, Glenz said. In the regular season he didn't play anywhere near this level, but he's really picked the right time to step up.
The Owls trailed just once, 1-0, in the second quarter, but that deficit didn't last long, as Adam Mahfouda spun his way into the crease and scored an unassisted goal just 1:59 after Garden City had opened the scoring in the second quarter. The teams went into the half tied, 2-2, but Lynbrook scored the first three goals of the second half to give itself a three-goal cushion. Alex Deluca led the way for the Owls with two goals, while Joe Shanagan and Eric Trama also added tallies.
We were able to get a pair in the second quarter and then put a lot of pressure on Garden City [after the intermission], Glenz said. We won a lot of ground balls and continued to gain the possessions. The ground balls were the key to our win.
