Flower Mound hockey enters playoffs, drawing tough first-round foe

By John English

The Flower Mound Varsity Gold hockey team starts the playoffs on Tuesday night against a team they have had three very different results against during the regular season.

The Jaguars, who enter the postseason as the sixth seed with a 10-11-2 regular season record, will square off with Plano Senior at 8:45 p.m. at the Plano US Arena for the two teams' fourth meeting this season.

In their first encounter on Oct. 29, Senior defeated Flower Mound 4-1 in a game in which the Jaguars did not score after the first minute of regulation.

In a rematch on Jan. 14, the Jags came roaring back with an 8-3 drubbing of Senior as Jake Newton, Trent Singletary, Colin Burns and Sean O'Connor scored a pair of goals each for Flower Mound and Newton picked up three assists.

Bryan Mills stopped 29 of 32 shots on goal in the game for Flower Mound as well.

In the rubber match on Feb. 25, in spite of a two-goal effort from Mitchell Rausch for the Jaguars, Plano Senior defeated Flower Mound 8-2, though the shots on goal were only 30-29 in favor of Senior.

The game on Tuesday night will be played at the Plano US Arena, which was the location of the 8-3 victory for Flower Mound, while the other two were played at the FB Miller Arena, and it really does come down to how well the Jaguars play defense.

Plano Senior has the league's top regular-season scorer in Matt Fulcoly, and two others in the top 10 with Jonathan Thompson and Billy Rinker.

It is Thompson and Erik Wilkins who have proved to be the biggest Jaguar killers this season for Senior, with three goals a piece against Flower Mound.

When the Jaguars are on, they are a tough, tough team to beat. But they are going to have to find a way to slow Plano Senior's offensive attack to advance to the second round of the playoffs.