Anaheim Ducks high school league completed hockey season before COVID-19 shutdown, locals shined

Three years ago, the Edison High hockey team played into mid-March on its way to capturing the Commissioner’s Cup.

Edison edged La Puente Bishop Amat 6-4 in the Anaheim Ducks High School Hockey League’s Division 3 championship game at The Rinks Anaheim Ice.

The season used to stretch from September into February before starting the playoffs, but the opening of Great Park Ice and FivePoint Arena in Irvine at the start of 2019 allowed for a condensed schedule.

If there were ever good timing, this was it. The ADHSHL was largely unaffected by the outbreak of the coronavirus.

“Luckily, we had already planned to condense our season with more ice availability at Great Park,” Erik Pessolano, the ADHSHL’s director of media, said via text message. “We completed a full 18-game season from October to February before the pandemic halted most sports. We finished our playoffs, as well, and the state playoffs were completed, too. The only thing that did not occur was the high school national championships.”

After a one-year stint at Division 1 following the title run, Edison was back in Division 3 last season. This season, the Chargers made the leap to Division 2.

Edison (14-5-0-1, third place) had forward Stephen Bedard, defensemen Clay Bozanich and Easton Laird, and goaltender Grey Godfrey named to the ADHSHL Senior All-Star game this season.

Senior forward Evan Osterkamp and Bozanich each had two goals, and Bedard had a four-point performance as the Chargers routed the Poway Unified Hawks 8-2 in the Division 2 quarterfinals.

The Chargers lost to eventual champion Bellflower St. John Bosco 3-2 in the semifinals. Junior forward Ryan Newton and Laird scored the goals for Edison.

Beach Cities (10-6-0-4, fifth) had Tommy Lang, a senior center at Huntington Beach, selected to the ADHSHL Senior All-Star game. Senior goaltender Ricardo Arellanes (Redondo Union) and senior defenseman Paul Wagner (Huntington Beach) were also chosen to play in the Varsity All-Star game.

Forward Joe Rando, a junior at Huntington Beach, led the Beach Cities squad with 10 goals and 10 assists during the regular season.

Lang got red-hot late in the season, scoring 11 goals to go with three assists over a four-game stretch. The hot streak ended with a four-goal, six-point performance in a 10-1 win over the Corona-Norco Stingrays in the first round of the Division 2 playoffs on Feb. 12.

“That was definitely fun,” Lang said. “I scored all four of my goals with the exact same shot in the exact same spot, just top right corner every time.

“The goalie wouldn’t ever cover it, so it’s just every time I came down, pretty much always coming down the right side, top right would be open. It kept working, so if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.”

Lang said that hockey is a year-round sport for him, as he also plays club hockey with the California Wave organization. The coronavirus has taken that away for now, but he hopes to continue playing hockey in college.

Chargers coach David Walker also holds the title of Great Park Ice Hockey manager. He believes that the sport will be able to sustain through the hiatus forced upon its players and fans by COVID-19.

“I don’t think that the shutdown is really going to affect the long term, because at the end of the day, people who are involved in the game of hockey, they’re involved with it because they love it,” Walker said. “Once things pick up, things that you love, you’re going to end up going back to.

“I think if anything, it helps people realize how much they truly miss it and enjoy being around it. If anything, it might actually bring more people back into it, realizing how something [has been] removed from your every-day life that you take for granted.”

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