The red Grosse Ile ice hockey team closed out its summer league campaign with a win over Riverview Cabrini United at Southgate Arena on July 24, 2024. (Samantha Elliott — Courtesy of MediaNews Group)
SOUTHGATE – After five weeks of competition, local ice hockey teams wrapped up their respective summer leagues this week at Southgate Arena.
The Grosse Ile team ended its summer campaign with a 6-3 win over the Riverview-Cabrini JV on Wednesday night.
With the majority of their team graduating — nine seniors, to be exact — the Red Devils are searching for players to take a big step forward, but one of the area's top teams for 2023-24 may have found some answers after performing well throughout the summer.
Then on Wednesday, they used a big first half to secure the win.
“It was good,” Grosse Ile assistant coach Dan Keenan said. “It was good experience for the guys and they got a lot of good time on the ice. We have a lot of young guys developing, but they're good players and I think they'll live up to our expectations.”
Summer games will be played at halftime instead of each period, rather than the traditional three 17-minute frames seen during the high school season, with each frame lasting 22 minutes.
Riverview Cabrini jumped out to an early lead on the power play, but Grosse Ile then scored six goals in a nine-minute span to seal the win.
Devils head coach Jason Durbin was very supportive of Keenan's thoughts about the summer league experience.
“We're losing nine seniors from last year's team, so we need to get our younger guys up to speed as quickly as possible,” he said. “A lot of the instruction will be with our 24-25 year old team next year, but we're looking forward to continued development from our returning players.”
Photo: Ice Hockey – Summer League, Southgate Arena, July 23-24
The night before, the New Boston United team was soundly defeated by Brownstown-Woodhaven, 13-2, in the second of two games played that night.
“Summer hockey is a great place for young kids to get involved,” United coach Bob Murray said, “and we hope some of the kids end up playing on the team. Some of those kids won't play together and that can happen with any team here.”
Summer is the time when kids coming out of middle school get a taste of high school hockey, and Murray, like many other coaches, welcomes giving his players that opportunity as part of the evaluation process.
“It's a good place for kids to get involved at a young age,” Murray said. “Some of them are intimidated because they're younger or smaller, but some of them have the grit and the talent.”
Led by New Boston Huron, this year's United team will again feature players from five different schools, including players from Carleton Airport, Dearborn Heights Crestwood, Flat Rock and Garden City.
After struggling last season, the local co-op program is looking to improve this year with a still-young team, and Murray anticipates there could be some growing pains with the influx of youth at an already young club.
“We're still young,” Murray said, “we have five or six freshmen and only two or three seniors. We're going to have some struggles here and there, but I think we have more talent than we did last year.”
For now, NBU only has one goalkeeper, one of the aforementioned freshmen, but Murray is optimistic about her abilities.
“We're talking about a young woman who has the drive to play,” he said. “At the high school level, it's a whole different kind of game than playing against kids who are four or five years older than you, so we give her credit for going out there.”
United will wrap up their summer league schedule with a match against Allen Park in their final game of the summer before turning their focus to the start of the regular season in November.
In the meantime, Murray says his focus will be on staying disciplined on both ends of the ice.
“Our goal is to keep the puck out of our half and keep the puck there,” Murray said. “It's a combination of our young guys meeting the challenge of playing solid, physical hockey in the other half and playing responsible hockey in their own half.”