Article courtesy of Daniel Shepard with 406mtsports.com
Photo courtesy of Brett Penner Photography
Helena Bighorns capture 4th straight Frontier Division crown
You ever been somewhere so loud you couldn’t think?
Next to a jet taking off? Front row at a hand-banging metal concert? Attending a rambunctious birthday party for kids? The wrong end of a nagging significant other? Steed Arena when the Helena Bighorns are on the cusp of playoff history?
The latter greeted Great Falls Americans players Friday night, 1950-plus screaming Bighorns fans packed inside a metal box with their slew of noise-making devices tuned up numbing the ears before Helena even took the ice.
“You don’t know what’s going through your head, all you hear is noise,” first-year Bighorns forward Brandon Mcilhany said.
“That’s just our crowd. We have the best fanbase in the league right now.”
A chorus of train, car and truck horns mixed with old-fashioned joyous screams reached a fever pitch as the final seconds drained from Helena’s fourth consecutive Frontier Division Championship, a 4-1 outcome sending the Bighorns (45-5-1-1) into the NA3HL Fraser Cup Championship Tournament where a chance to defend their national title awaits.
“It makes everyone tear up,” Mcilhany, who supplied a first-period assist and second-period goal, said. “It gives you chills down your back, nothing like it.”
Head coach Damon Hanson emerged from a victorious locker room soaked to the bone, a playoff-winning ritual that, along with winning championships, has become a Bighorns March tradition. Helena doesn’t have the luxury of retaining many players year-over-year, that’s simply the nature of junior hockey, but Friday secured the Bighorns’ second straight 45-win or better campaign.
“The teams change but the mindset doesn’t,” Hanson said. “The goal remains the same year after year after year…
“When we arrive here in August, the first thing we tell them is, ‘we’re gonna be champions and there’s no other way.’ It’s a mindset from the beginning.”
Two players unknown for their goal-scoring ability celebrated finding the net’s bottom on the biggest stage. Mcilhany and Kelton Chadwick netted a combined 10 goals entering play, the former’s most recent coming on Nov. 30 against Gillette.
Chadwick’s triumph doubled Helena’s slimmest of leads in the second period, a goal fought for on the move through and around two Great Falls defenders and a goalie.
“I was frustrated, I had a shot blocked right before that,” Chadwick, a Phoenix native, said. “Just wanted to make a move, I went coast-to-coast, really just wheeled around them…
“Scored, fell on my back listening to that crowd cheer. Last game in Steed Arena, what a great feeling.”
Chadwick assisted Mcilhany’s goal, a point responding to the Americans’ deficit-cutting heroics around five game minutes earlier. Mcilhany, having capped his first multi-point performance since Sept. 7 (one goal, one assist), was embraced by teammates as the crowd roared.
“I got a wicked pass from [Kelton] who saw me,” Mcilhany, from Colorado Springs, said. “All I had to do was finish it, it was the best feeling ever.”
Chadwick, during a three-week period where sickness tore through Helena’s locker room, battled mono. He visited several doctors trying to get clearance to rejoin the ice for the Bighorns’ final few home games, a stage Chadwick hoped to capture his second straight division crown upon.
“I’ve probably played 60 games here,” Chadwick said. “Every game more meaningful than the last. It means so much to go out there, win that Frontier Division again, be one of those older guys that people look up to…
“I wasn’t even supposed to play, I had mono two weeks ago and wasn’t supposed to be back until St. Louis.”
Marcus Fritel scored his 38th goal of the season in the third period, his 12th in 13 games since joining Helena at the trade deadline from the Mason City Toros. Hunter Coulombe, off a Mcilhany assist, opened the scoring with his 11th goal seven minutes into Friday’s contest.
Bighorn’s goalie Branson Appelman turned back 27 of 28 shots on goal, allowing only a second-period penalty shot to crash home. Appelman, statistically the NA3HL’s best goalie entering play, stopped 44 of 45 Great Falls opportunities in Game 1 Wednesday.
Helena, a combined 174-20-3-3 in four championship seasons, begins its Fraser Cup title defense Wednesday in St. Peters, Missouri, right outside St. Louis. No environment will compare to Friday night’s ear-splitting audience, but somewhere in Helena during the Bighorns’ run they’ll be jersey-clad hopefuls causing a stir and yelling toward a TV.
“This group has been sick for three weeks, fever, flu, it doesn’t matter,” Hanson said. “They just kept pushing…
“There’s no quit in this group, we’ve obviously gotta get there and earn it, but they deserve it.”