Provisional government

Montgomery County’s top team in December isn’t who you might think

Wednesday, Dec. 20, 2006

Click here to enlarge this photo charles e. shoemaker⁄the gazette Silver Spring resident Danny Karbeling scored three goals Monday to lead Springbrook⁄Einstein to a 7-0 win over Sherwood Monday night in Laurel. The MSHL provisional team is now 5-0 on the season.

The reason is not because the program is only five years old. It’s not because the team isn’t one of the traditional hockey powers in Montgomery County. And it’s not because the players hail from the eastern part of the county instead of Bethesda or Potomac. Though those things are all true.

The simple reason why the Springbrook⁄Einstein ice hockey team can’t win the state title is because it’s not allowed to. The team is made up of students at seven different schools, meaning it has ‘‘provisional” status in the MSHL, and is therefore not allowed to take part in the league playoffs.

That’s a shame, because judging from its December results, Springbrook⁄Einstein might just be the best team in the league.

‘‘It is a little surprising, in the sense that we lost about 50 percent of our scoring from last year,” O’Brien said. ‘‘You have to have the skill, but the big thing is that they play well together.”

With a 7-0 win over Sherwood Monday night, the team moved to 5-0 in the MSHL. Five different players scored Springbrook⁄Einstein’s first five goals, and senior Danny Karbeling scored the last two to complete a hat trick. Karbeling’s identical twin, Jason, got the shutout win in goal.

Last season, when it was just known as Springbrook, the team went 7-2-1 and finished third in the Montgomery East Division. But that was with standout forward Greg Melnick, an All-Gazette honorable-mention selection.

Melnick graduated; the team only got better. With the win over Sherwood, it has now beaten the top two finishers in last year’s Montgomery East standings, having already knocked off last year’s division champ, Bethesda-Chevy Chase, 4-2 on Dec. 8. Even more eye-opening was a 4-3 win on Nov. 29 over Churchill, last year’s undefeated state champion.

‘‘Everyone looked up to Melnick for four years,” junior forward Kevin Klimczak said. ‘‘He was such a big presence on our team. I thought it was going to be tough when we lost him, but everybody stepped up.”

The team also got an influx of six freshmen, including four from Einstein. The Kensington school now has the largest contingent of players on the roster — seven — prompting the addition of its name to the team. The squad also includes five players from Springbrook, three from Kennedy, two each from Northwood and Jewish Day, and one each from The Nora School and Thornton Friends, two small private schools in Silver Spring.

It is tempting to think that pulling from so many different schools would be an advantage for O’Brien’s team. But it’s not like he can recruit players from just anywhere — an MSHL committee approves the rosters of every provisional team before the season. And the diversity of the group actually creates some problems.

‘‘We only practice once a week, and some of our players can’t make it to practices,” O’Brien said. ‘‘So if we’re going to gel together, we have to work at it, because they don’t see each other at school every day. ... The advantage is, they’re all here because they love hockey. That’s true of a lot of teams, but especially us, because they sought this team out.”

The squad has taken on a free-spirit personality born of having nothing to lose. Several players sport long hair, or mismatched uniforms, and the locker-room atmosphere is very loose — Disney’s Mighty Ducks come to life.

‘‘We’re just in the locker room after the game joking around, no matter what happened,” Jason Karbeling said. ‘‘I think it helps a lot. The players are all comfortable with each other. ... We all know each other through hockey, we used to play with or against these guys. So even though we don’t go to the same school, we all know each other pretty well.”

The same can’t be said, necessarily, for their classmates. Some of the team’s players feel as overlooked at school as they are by the MSHL’s elite programs.

‘‘You’d think because we represent more schools, we’d have more support, but actually, we have less,” Klimczak said. ‘‘At Einstein, a lot of people don’t even know we have a team. I’m on the newspaper at Einstein, so I’m trying to get the word out there.”

Provisional teams start because there aren’t enough players at one school to fill out a roster. Historically, they haven’t had a great deal of success in the MSHL. Last season, Springbrook was the only one of the five in Montgomery County to finish above .500.

Gaithersburg, which went 5-5 last year, has also done fairly well this season and came as close as anyone to beating Springbrook⁄Einstein, losing a 9-6 decision Dec. 1. This year’s Montgomery County ranks include two other provisional teams, Burke⁄WIS and Northwest⁄Germantown.

But Springbrook⁄Einstein is clearly the class of this year’s field. There is talk among the team’s players and coaches of setting up a provisional playoff after the season, but nothing is confirmed as of yet.

For now, the team can’t play for the right to be the best, so they’ll content themselves with beating the best.

‘‘It does get irritating,” junior defenseman Peter Myers said. ‘‘But we can affect who does go the playoffs. The teams who aren’t on our schedule are lucky. That’s just how we look at it.”