Orchard Lake St. Mary’s hockey wins state championship

ORCHARD LAKE — Orchard Lake St. Mary’s won the Division III hockey state championship March 8 at USA Hockey Arena in Plymouth.

St. Mary’s is consistently competing in the state final tournament weekend and is highly ranked year in and year out, but this season the program was finally able to get over the hump and win the school’s first hockey title since 2008.

“This team is very skilled and very talented,” Orchard Lake St. Mary’s longtime head coach Brian Klanow said. “But the most important component they had was their brotherhood.”

That talent and camaraderie took this program to incredible heights this season. In the run to the crown, St. Mary’s won 5-1 and 9-1 in the quarterfinals and semifinals, respectively, before a dominant 3-0 showing in the state title game against Cranbrook Kingswood.

“(Cranbrook) beat us twice this year,” St. Mary’s sophomore forward Thad Raynish said. “We really wanted to beat them… 3-0 looks really good up on the scoreboard.”

Raynish is right, and shutouts in state title games are very rare. The goaltending and defense that St. Mary’s got in the postseason was stellar, as the team only allowed two goals in the final three rounds of the tournament combined.

“My philosophy certainly has to start with defense. If you can’t play in the defensive end then it doesn’t really matter what you’re doing offensively,” Klanow explained. “We changed our strategy a little bit about three quarters of the way through (the season)... It really helped us out.”

You can almost pinpoint exactly where the adjustments were made. After a 3-2 loss to Sault Ste. Marie Feb. 14, the team then went 6-0 and outscored its opponents by a whopping 38-4 to close out the year.

Jacob Fedor, Jack Squire and Diezel Cariera led the team’s defense this season and were pillars to the success of the program. In net, St. Mary’s had two goalies with a save percentage over .900 in Mason Shea and Will Keane, with Keane getting the shutout in the state title game.

“We knew that if everyone did their jobs the goals would come,” Raynish said. “We always find ways to score so we knew if we could just shut down the other team, we’ll have plenty of opportunities to score.”

The offense was led by Raynish and junior Charlie Roberts, who both led the team in scoring this season with 36 and 32 points, respectively. Both of them recorded a point in the state title game as well.

“One of the things that was nice was we never had to rely on one or two people to score,” Roberts said. “That’s what we saw in the playoffs, different people stepping up at different times.”

The hockey program at St. Mary’s has a winning culture. However, after nearly 20 years of competitive seasons and postseason appearances, the team still wasn’t able to bring home a trophy.

That makes this season’s title mean even more to the team and the community.

“We haven’t won (a title) in a long time and I think everyone rallied around that,” Raynish said. “It’s great being a part of this team. (For) all of the people that come to the games… it’s just good that we finally got it done.”

The standard at the program was already to win state titles, and now with a win in everyone’s back pocket, that message only grows stronger.

“For us, every year going into our season, the state championship…  is the goal,” Klanow said. “Every year we feel that we have a solid opportunity to win that.”

The 2024-2025 Orchard Lake St. Mary’s team will forever be remembered within the program for the hard work, dedication and brotherhood of everyone involved.

“(The players) always used the slogan, ‘Keep your eye on the prize,’” Klanow said. “That started from day one when we started training in the summer and carried through until the final day when we won a state championship.”