The Long Island Gulls U16 squad competed against some of the nation's top teams this past weekend in Chicago. The High Performance Hockey League (HPHL) schedule featured games against three tough Michigan clubs; Honeybaked, Little Caesars, and Compuware.  Due to scheduling conflicts, sickness, and injuries to two key forwards, the Gulls were only able to bring 15 players to the Leaf Center, but fought hard in all three games against bigger, deeper, and mostly older teams. The result was three losses; however, the team competed hard from start to finish and kept two of the three games close.

The best effort of the weekend was against Little Caesars, a 4-3 nail biter. After falling behind 4-1, the Gulls began to mount a comeback with goals by Michael Costello, off of a great rush down the wing and feed from Christopher Garbe, and Michael Conlin finding space in the slot after some hard work in the corner from Devin Heffernan and Ryan Brassil.  Garbe would also have a goal disallowed after the referee ruled the puck hit post and crossbar but did not cross the goal line. That is as close as Long Island would get. Thomas Finck had the Gulls other goal in the contest.

Sunday's morning game against Compuware was a one goal contest almost throughout. Down 1-0 after the first period, Garbe scored on a power play off of a nice passing play from Finck and Julian Coleman. Compuware quickly regained the lead and added another midway through the third before sealing the game with an empty net tally for the 4-1 win.

GuIls goaltender Vinny Capezza was the biggest standout of the weekend stopping 95 shots, many of them spectacular, and consistently keeping his team in contention. Michael Muschitiello also added a goal for the Gulls.

Although the team planned for better results, they fought admirably and can use this experience as a primer for stretch runs to the AYHL and LIAHL playoffs.