Ice Hawks ready to skate at state tourney

It has been a challenging season for the Havre Ice Hawks, especially with the difficult schedule they have had to play. But, at the Class B High School state tournament of the Montana Amautuer Hockey Association, the Ice Hawks will be on a much more level playing field.

The tournament will take place in Miles City. Games will start Friday and will run until Sunday, when a champion is crowned. Along with the Ice Hawks, there will be three other teams competing at the tournament and those are Glasgow, Butte and Miles City.

In all, there are 10 teams that play at the high school level of the MAHA. Yet, there are two different state tournaments, a Class A tournament and one for Class B. The way that teams are separated comes down to record. The teams with the six best records participate in the Class A tournament, while the teams with the four worst records compete in the Class B tournament.

The Ice Hawks, who posted a record of 1-15-2 against the other nine teams in Montana, will be in the B tournament, but that’s nothing to be ashamed of. That’s because there is a sizeable difference between teams like Havre, Glasgow and Miles City and others that come from bigger cities such as in Missoula, Billings, Butte, Helena, Bozeman, Kalispell and Great Falls.

That’s what makes the B tournament exciting for Havre and the other teams, because it’s much easier for the smaller teams to compete. Havre, which was 10th in the league, will take on the seventh-place team, which is Butte. The Copper Kings were 5-11-1 on the season and are probably the favorite coming in since they had the best regular season record among the teams at the Class B tournament. Yet, the Ice Hawks, who will be under the direction of head coach Brian Lenhardt, have to feel good about their matchup with Butte, thanks to a 5-5 tie between the two teams back on Dec. 12. The other meeting saw the Copper Kings win 6-2.

Havre also has to feel confident thanks to a number of experienced players that return from last year’s team, which includes Jeffrey Ralph, Kade Friede, Clifford Lenhardt, Cole Hanson, Barrett Kilgore, Kyle Kirkpatrick and Ethan Roberts. The rest of the roster includes Nick Stump, the goaltender, as well as August Eacker, Alex Stilger, Bayron Merker, Noah Kirsch and Bryce Denton.

In addition to tying Butte earlier this season, Havre also owns a win over Glasgow and has tied Miles City, the other teams playing each other Friday.

SInce there are just four teams in the tournament, the format is a round-robin, so each team will play three games and the two teams with the best records will play for the championship. The third- and fourth-place teams with play for third. Havre will also play Miles City Saturday at 10 a.m., and Glasgow Saturday night at 6.

The consolation game is Sunday at 9 a.m., followed by the championship game at 11 a.m.