Rinkside: Carmel Gold shuts out Zionsville 6-0.
Icehounds dominate on defense, allowing just three shots on net in annual charity game
CARMEL — Simplicity is what Carmel Gold coach Tyler Decosse wants from his team.
Limit turnovers. Be in the right position. Trust the system.
On Sunday, the Icehounds gave him a pretty good example of what that can look like.
Carmel held Zionsville to just three shots on goal and had five different players score in a 6-0 victory at Carmel Ice Skadium, with William Rowe earning the shutout in the annual charity matchup between the two programs.
"A lot of what we're doing now is just simplicity," Decosse said. "Hockey's a game of turnovers. What I tell my guys is, 'The team that has the fewest amount of turnovers is usually gonna win.'"
Carmel established that control almost immediately.
The Icehounds put 10 shots on Tyler Kinsey in the first period.
Henry Harter opened the scoring, assisted by Jacob Myers and Mitchell Joon Yang. Yang then scored to send Carmel into the first intermission with a 2-0 lead.
For Harter, Carmel's early success came from a group buying into what its coaches have asked it to do.
"We just really wanna win, so we're sticking to our systems and playing as a team and playing together," Harter said.
That system has been drilled repeatedly in practice.
Decosse said Carmel can spend 30 to 40 minutes in a practice working specifically on its forecheck, trying to make positioning instinctive rather than something players have to process during a game.
"It might not be the most exciting thing in the world," Decosse said. "But after a while, hopefully our players will just realize, 'Hey, I'm in the right spot.'"
The Icehounds didn't let up in the second.
Carmel generated another 10 shots, with Hudson Tolliver scoring the period's only goal to make it 3-0. Zionsville finally generated two shots of its own, but neither got past Rowe.
The Arctic Eagles were still within striking distance entering the third, but that's where Zionsville coach Chris Saxhaug saw the game change.
"Our main thing was we played the first two periods fairly strong," Saxhaug said. "Our third period is where we lacked conditioning. We gotta get our conditioning back up in a baseline, otherwise we can't play three full periods."
Carmel scored three more times in the third. Carter Scobie made it 4-0, Tal Schlueter added another, and Landon Stankiewicz finished the scoring with assists from Gannon Vien and Harter.
By the end, Carmel had produced exactly 10 shots in each period — 30 overall — while Zionsville finished with three.
For Saxhaug, the disparity reinforced something Zionsville needs to address early in the season.
"We're not gonna be the high-skill team every time we're out there, but we're not gonna get outworked," Saxhaug said. "And right now we got outworked 'cause we're out of shape."
His players recognized it, too.
Zionsville enters the season with several new faces, leaving its returning players with the responsibility of passing along an identity they believe has defined the program.
"Zionsville's known for their hard work and intensity," William Gona said. "Right now we are not known for that. We gotta get the new guys flowing, learn the culture and improve."
Matthew Beaupre sees the early portion of the season as part of that process.
"A lot of new guys this year, so it's gonna be a learning experience to start," Beaupre said. "But as long as we can pass on that hard-working culture, we're gonna have better results going forward."
Ryan Fleming pointed to Zionsville's veterans as the group responsible for making sure that happens.
"A lot of us have been down before in the past, and culture is what keeps us going," Fleming said. "So it's just passing it on to the new kids now and showing them that you can still come back from a game. There's a lot of time."
Carmel's players talked about a similar sense of accountability within their own locker room.
"I think we have a really close team," Harter said. "We all love each other in this locker room. We're a family in this locker room. We hold each other to a high standard."
Austin Hopwood added that the Icehounds are "pushing each other and holding each other accountable" while trying to bring that standard to practice every day.
More than a game
Sunday's matchup also continued a charity tradition between the programs that dates back roughly 7 years.
Previous games have supported organizations, and this year's effort focused on food and other assistance for underprivileged families, with several Zionsville players personally involved with the charity.
"We have a couple of our players who work specifically with this charity," Saxhaug said. "We actually have a couple players that'll be driving up there later today and donating everything."
The charitable component added significance to what was also one of Carmel's first games of the season. Decosse said that opportunity to give back is something he wants his players to understand.
"It's a great opportunity as well for our players to learn to give back to the community," Decosse said. "Especially with the flooding we've had here, you just can't really go wrong with giving back to our local community."
The trophy gave the teams something to play for Sunday. But for Decosse, the purpose of the annual matchup extends beyond what happened during three periods at Carmel Ice Skadium.
"There's more to the game of hockey than out here," he said.