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USC Hockey Blanks Fox Chapel, 2-0

Ambrose stops 34 shots to send Panthers to PIHL title game.

With two minutes left in the third period and down by two, Fox Chapel's Daniel Humes streaked up the ice at CONSOL Energy Center with the puck on a breakaway.

Moments like these are ones that, for shooters, either add to a player's legend, or, for goaltenders, helps to create one for themselves. Upper St. Clair sophomore goaltender Michael Ambrose was in that moment.

And he seized it.

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Ambrose used his right pad to stop one of the PIHL Class AAA's leading scorers one-on-one and preserve a 34-save shutout in a 2-0 semifinal victory, vaulting the Panthers into the championship game Sunday night.

"I went at it with the poke first and I just missed it," Ambrose said. "I just threw my leg out there and he put it right in my pad."

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Having notched his first shutout of the season, Ambrose has now stopped 66 of the last 68 shots he has faced and is one of the main reasons Upper St. Clair has broken its streak of consecutive semifinal round losses.

Head coach Larry Marks and senior forward Justin Selep both used the exact same word to describe Ambrose's performance: "Phenomenal."

"He really stepped up tonight," Marks said. "He's extremely sound in goal, he squares up to the puck and he did a good job of freezing the puck when he had the opportunity, also."

"I can't put into words how phenomenal he was," Selep said. "He stood on his head and I'm so proud of him."

In the second consecutive game when the league's highest-scoring offense was shut out in the first period and out-shot by their opponent, the Panthers relied on their defense and goaltending to pull out a win that required all 45 minutes of the disciplined, team-oriented hockey they provided.

"The seniors have really stepped up," Marks said. "They've really taken some leadership they've worked with these kids and they've become more of a family. They don't want to lose this semi and they don't want to lose Sunday, either."

"We just stayed strong, mentally and physically," captain C.J. Murray said. "We played defense first and to get the goose egg, it's a great time to do it."

Sophomore forward Michael Sweeney finally broke the scoreless deadlock at 8:01 of the second when he took a perfectly-placed centering pass on a 2-on-1 from linemate Luke Stork and re-directed it past Fox Chapel goaltender Tyler Fannie for a 1-0 lead.

"Coach Marks said we had to bear down on defense," Selep said. "But after he scored that goal Mikey said, 'The wingers have got to stay low and play defense because we have enough goals to win the game if we want it.'"

Fox Chapel had a chance to tie it a minute later on the power play, but a Colin Cheng shot rang off the post on Ambrose's left side, and the Foxes would come no closer to scoring again.

Throw in the fact that Upper St. Clair had to kill eight penalties compared to only two for Fox Chapel and it gives an even deeper meaning to the kind of game Ambrose played from start to finish.

"Unfortunately, we take a lot of penalties," Marks said, laughing. "But they're very comfortable killing penalties, they're relaxed out there and they don't panic. The feed off each other, they play very well together and they know what each one has to do."

"We just wanted to get in front of shots and get into shooting lanes because Ambrose is so good down low," Selep said. "The penalty kill was all him. There isn't much more I can say about him. He was incredible."

Fox Chapel may not have put any in the back of the net, but it wasn't from lack of trying. The Foxes outshot Upper St. Clair, 25-16, in the final two periods.

After killing off another penalty — this one an interference call on defenseman Ryan Haleski — Stork stole the puck deep in the Fox Chapel zone, bore down the left wing boards and wristed a shot past Fannie for a 2-0 lead with 7:12 left in the game.

After that, the rest was up to Ambrose, who was a spectator during the last two Upper St. Clair playoff exits, a platoon member with junior Michael Stein throughout the regular season, and is now playing like the hottest goaltender in the PIHL playoffs.

His save on Humes in the closing moments prompted a collective groan from the Fox Chapel fans, similar to the sound of all of the oxygen being sucked out of the building.

"My heart stopped," Selep said. "Then when he saved it, I was so excited, more than when we scored the goals. That was the biggest play of the game."

"He's awesome on breakaways, he really is," Marks said. "He's very fundamentally sound and he doesn't make his first commitment; he makes [the shooter] commit first and when someone comes in on a breakaway I don't ever have a problem with him."

When asked if he could choose between the save on Humes and the glove save that he called "the best of my life" in the quarterfinal win over North Allegheny, Ambrose said with a smile, "Humes on the breakaway."

During a break in the action with less than a minute remaining, each of the Panthers' five skaters on the ice skated the length of the ice and tapped their net-minder's pads with their sticks, bumped gloves with his blocker and butted helmets, the customary end-of-game greeting.

That alone said it all, but they congratulated him even more out loud.

"Great save," Murray said he told him. "That save was the biggest save of the game. He was awesome."

"Just 'Great job,'" Ambrose said his teammates told him. "That's pretty much it. I was telling them just to stay focused on the game and make sure they get the puck out of the zone."

Now that the Panthers have their goal firmly in sight with a return trip to CONSOL Energy Center Sunday night for the championship game, it will take a win against a section rival -- either Bethel Park or Canon-McMillan, who will play in the other semifinal Tuesday night at 9 -- to complete their journey. 

"I don't want to play either one of them," Marks said. "They're both well-coached, very disciplined and very hard-working teams. No matter who we play it's going to be a really, really tight game."

"Whenever Sunday comes around, this game is not going to mean anything," Ambrose said. "It's a brand new game, a brand new team, and we'll have to play just as hard as we did tonight."

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