Original Article

CHESTERFIELD — St. Louis U. High’s Jacob Buttice heard the sound that keeps every goalie up at night — the sound of rubber hitting metal.

For Buttice and the Jr. Billikens, instead of a nightmare, the clang turned out to be a sweet reprieve as SLUH went on to defeat Chaminade 4-1 in the first game of the Mid-States Club Hockey Association Challenge Cup Red Conference round robin at the Maryville University Ice Center on Friday night.

“It got behind me and I was a little nervous,” Buttice said. “It got deflected. It changed trajectory and after that I kind of lost it and just turned around and watched hit the post and trickle away.”

Matthew Warnecke scored twice and had an assist and Henry Serafin and Brock Massie also scored for SLUH (6-7-4). Benjamin Winkelmann had a pair of assists, while Buttice finished with 18 saves.

“The key overall was the buy-in of the kids to trust each other on the bench, trust each other on the ice, and quit trying to press too hard,” SLUH interim coach Steve Walters said. “That's when we limited our mistakes and that way they didn't have too many chances to come back.”

The game turned on that fateful post off a drive by Chaminade’s Jacob Bartnett early in the third. Instead of tying the game at 2-all for the Red Devils, it gave SLUH new life.

The Jr. Billikens capitalized with two goals in the next two minutes.

Warnecke gave SLUH a 3-1 lead at 3:07 of the third with a quick wrister from the right circle and Massie’s power-play goal 67 seconds later gave the Jr. Billikens firm control.

“Once we got that third goal you can clearly tell the energy on their whole bench just changed,” Warnecke said. “They weren't keeping up with the battles anymore and we just seemed to take over from there.”

Buttice wasn’t going to relax with the extra insurance.

“At that point, you got to be as focused as ever, because a quick goal or two and they're right back in the game so you've always got to stay dialed in,” Buttice said.

Andrew Clarke scored a goal and Luka Myller made 23 saves for Chaminade (6-10-1).

Clarke gave Chaminade the lead, finishing on a 3-in-1 break with 1:21 left in the first period.

The lead lasted just 75 seconds before a Warnecke laser glanced off the crossbar and into the net to tie the game 1-1 with 6 seconds left in the opening frame.

“We gave up the blue line pretty easily,” Chaminade coach Joe Watson said. “An elite player, (Warnecke) comes down and throws it under the bar and that's what elite players do.”

SLUH took the lead with another last-minute goal in the second period as Winkelmann found Serafin alone in front of the Chaminade net. Serafin spun around and went 5-hole on a backhand to make it 2-1 Jr. Billikens.

Both goalies made highlight-reel worthy saves.

Buttice erased a pair of turnovers in the second period, including a sprawling stop on a Clarke chance.

“He's been there all year and the kids believe in him,” Walters said. “This is his senior year. He's had to sit on the sideline, not starting, and then the year starts out, he gets COVID, so he misses the first five games. So this is really good for him to get his first playoff win.”

Myller went side to side to stymie a Joey Perotti chance in the first and made a dazzling stop on a Maxwell Sextro tip in the second.

The top 12 teams in Mid-States are placed in the Challenge Cup and are equally divided into a Red and Blue Conference based on seeding. The top four teams in the two conferences advance to the quarterfinals.

The win gave SLUH a big two points heading into its game Saturday with No. 10 Summit. The Jr. Billikens finish round robin play Monday against CBC.

The loss gave Chaminade little room for error. The Red Devils face on Saturday and Lafayette on Tuesday.

“The thing that hurts us the most is the fact that we gave up four goals, and we're minus three right now,” Watson said, referring to a possible point differential tiebreaker. “We're not scoring a ton of goals in our games, so we've got to try to open up the floodgates (Saturday) night.”