Rochester United and Stoney Creek kick off high school battles at Comerica Park

By Stefan Kubus –

DETROIT – The first-ever high school hockey game to be played outdoors at Comerica Park as part of the 2013 Hockeytown Winter Festival featured a sensational script that even Hollywood’s finest writers couldn’t improve upon.

In front of the fading downtown-Detroit sun and, soon after, underneath the ballpark lights, Rochester United defeated cross-town rival Stoney Creek in a shootout Monday evening, 5-4. Sophomore Max Harper scored the game-winning goal in the shootout for RU, just minutes after Stoney Creek had scored a last-minute goal to force extra time.

But it was the moments after the spirited game that really captured what the event was all about. In what was a great sight to see, players from both teams were seen sharing laughs and taking pictures together, as most of them grew up playing together. Though that’s not quite typical of a regular-season game, the circumstances surrounding the event were anything but typical.

“Most of these kids have played youth hockey all the way through,” RU head coach Craig Staskowski said. “It’s all different age groups, the sophomores, the juniors, the seniors, so I think just being able to spend this day with some of their friends, not just the kids they go to school with, but the kids that play on the rival team made it a pretty cool day.”

But before the future memories could be shared, there was business on the ice to be dealt with.

Down 2-1 in the second period – after what Staskowski called a poor first period for his team – RU scored a pair of goals to go up 3-2 within a matter of minutes to swing the momentum back in their favor. They then added an insurance goal before the end of the second stanza to enter the third period with a 4-2 lead.

“Unfortunately, we’ve already had three, maybe four games where this has happened,” Staskowski said of falling behind in games. “We’ve done a good job all year, when we do get behind, we keep coming; we’re not going to quit. We know we have the firepower to score some goals and catch up. We feel we have a good team, and good teams are going to come back from couple-goal deficits.”

In that third period, Stoney Creek came back with a strong response of their own, lighting the lamp early to make it a 4-3 game. And then with three seconds left on the clock, the Cougars knotted the game to send it to a shootout, where RU’s Harper was the only player on either side to find the back of the net.

“That was awesome,” Harper said of the moment. “I was just trying to keep it simple and get the puck in the net.”

Harper’s coach credited Stoney Creek’s compete level and said without his team’s strong, three-goal second period, his team would’ve came up short.

“I’m not too sure about giving up the two goals in the last period there, like we did, but credit them,” Staskowski said. “Stoney Creek worked their tails off. In the first period and third period, I thought they were the better team. If it wasn’t for one good period, they’d probably win the game in regulation.”

Harper, who helps lead the offense for RU as a sophomore, said it was truly an unbelievable experience to play the game outdoors at such a venue like Comerica Park.

“Never, never,” said Harper of whether he ever envisioned himself playing in a game like that. “It’s so cool that it’s here in Detroit.”