Cheboygan hockey no match for high-powered Sault Blue Devils

CHEBOYGAN – The effort and intensity was there all night from the Cheboygan Chiefs against their hockey rivals from Sault Ste. Marie.

But sometimes you just run into a great team.

And this Blue Devils team the Chiefs faced looked like a vintage Sault Ste. Marie team.

Behind their depth, quality and speed on the ice, the Blue Devils were too much for the upset-minded Chiefs in a 9-1 victory at Ralph G. Cantile Arena on Wednesday night.

“You were here, you saw – the Sault has a very good hockey club,” said Cheboygan coach Craig Coxe. “They skate real well, they work real hard, they do the little things right, they play good positional hockey, and it’s tough when you’re playing against a team like that that’s got four lines that they can basically keep putting anybody on the ice.

“I’ve seen a lot of good Sault teams, and they’re definitely right up there (with their best teams). They’ve got a very nice hockey club.”

Looking to stun the Blue Devils for a second consecutive season, the Chiefs (2-5) came out and nearly took the lead early after senior defenseman Blaine Baldwin fired a puck off the post, which kept the game scoreless.

Not too long after that, though, the Blue Devils (5-2) flexed their offensive muscle as Evan Kennedy made it a 1-0 lead with a goal just over five minutes into the contest. After several of their scoring chances were denied by Cheboygan senior goaltender Chaston Rose, the Blue Devils’ patience finally paid off late in the period when Randen Blair and Josh Lumsden each scored to push the lead to 3-0 going into the intermission.

The Blue Devils kept their offensive flow going by increasing their lead to 4-0 after a goal by Garrett Gorsuch just 1:40 into the second period. The Chiefs finally got on the board with a goal from junior Gavin Rose about five minutes later, but then the Blue Devils responded with four unanswered goals to end the period. Sault players scoring during the stretch were Kennedy, Blair, Lumsden and George Baumann.

In the third, the Blue Devils ended the contest on a goal from Ethan Adair with 10:53 left in regulation.

Despite the defeat, Coxe lauded the work ethic of his squad, which did all it could to hang with the high-powered Blue Devils.

“The one thing I will say about my team tonight is they worked hard, they really did, and that’s what I ask them to do,” Coxe said. “I ask them to work hard. What we need to do is we need to learn to get better with the little things that make us a better hockey club. Better passing, better decision making with the puck, not throwing it away, making sure we get the puck out of our zone and into their zone. Those are all little things that need to be done."

The victory for the Blue Devils helped avenge a narrow overtime loss in Cheboygan last season, when the Chiefs won the game on a goal from Luke Karsten.

This time around, it was all Blue Devils.

“To me it wasn’t about revenge, it was just about remembering what happened last year in this rink,” said Sault coach Rick Mackie. “We’ve got some new players but we’ve got some second-year guys that remember that, and that was kind of the main focus coming in. I did mention it to them just so we didn’t have a relapse in focus, but tonight I thought we did exactly what I wanted us to do with our game plan, which was we wanted to push the pace in the neutral zone, get pucks behind (Cheboygan’s defense) and establish our cycle, and once we establish our cycle it’s really hard for opponents to chase it, and once you start chasing it you start getting tired and you make bad decisions with the puck, and that’s our goal which we’ve been doing all year long, is playing below the tops of the circles and making sure we’re generating chances, so I thought we did a really nice job.”

This is Mackie’s fifth year as head coach of the Blue Devils, and even he admitted this might be the best team he’s had since he took charge.

“This is definitely my deepest team, we have a lot of depth,” Mackie said. “We’ve got four lines that can play, we have six defensemen that can play, we’ve got two capable goaltenders, and the thing about this group is they’re extremely well coachable. They’re so coachable, you give them a system and they do it, and they don’t deviate from it. There’s not a lot of selfish play, it’s a very tight-knit group, there’s not many cliques in that room, so that makes a difference when you’re trying to coach.”

Wednesday marked a fourth straight defeat for the Chiefs, who are looking to regain their footing.

For Coxe, he knows if his team does the little things, it’ll be in a lot better shape going forward.

“I can tell you right now our next game against Lakeland is going to be just as hard, if not harder, than this game tonight, but me and the coaching staff, we still have all the confidence in the world with our guys,” Coxe said. “We’re seven games into the season, we’re not pushing the panic button. When something like this happens, you need to take something from every game, and what we need to take from this is that we need to say, ‘OK, we really do gotta work hard, we really do gotta work on doing the little things right,’ and this is something I’ve been telling the players for quite a few years I’ve been coaching, is, ‘If you do all the little things right, all the little things will become one really big thing, which makes our team better,’ and hopefully this is going to go like, ‘Hey, maybe the old man does know a little bit.’”

Rose, who stopped a Sault penalty shot in the second period, finished with 31 saves for the Chiefs.

Ethan McDonald, Baumann and Adair each helped out with two assists for the Blue Devils. Nicholas Wood, Avery Wilson, Jay Dunbar, Cale Bell and Gorsuch added an assist apiece. Goaltender Tristan Forgrave stopped 12 Cheboygan shots in the win.

Cheboygan will be off until it faces Lakeland in its Cheboygan Christmas Showcase on Friday, Dec. 16.

This article originally appeared on Cheboygan Daily Tribune: Cheboygan hockey no match for high-powered Sault Blue Devils