The S.S.Highlander sailed into the South Mountain Arena last Friday night sporting a record of 17-5-3 and eyeing the first ever chance at a conference championship for the West Milford High School Ice Hockey program. But the stout and nimble craft that has been the Highlander Hockey squad this season ran aground on a particularly nasty reef known as Ridgewood, and at the end of the night she became “Marooned”. The favored and highly ranked Ridgewood Maroons, led by the first team All-Conference line of Andrew Basso, Kyle Lucas, and Sam Graham escaped with the 6-4 win over West Milford but it took a late fluke goal and an empty-netter with 30 seconds left to close the deal. The Highlanders matched the Maroons goal for goal until those fateful last 5 minutes with their own scoring trio of Andrew Atieh (3G, 1A), Steve Williamson (1G, 3A), and Alex Barr (2A), and Sean Ryan was remarkable in net. Ridgewood opened the scoring only 3 minutes into the contest as Lucas burned the West Milford defense with a speedy move down the right side. This tally began the goal for goal matching that continued all night. Only 2 minutes later Atieh fed Barr in the high slot and the big defenseman blistered a shot that the Maroon goalkeeper stopped but Williamson crashed the net and slammed in the rebound to knot it at 1. At 8:44 Lucas displayed his scoring prowess by again toasting the defense to the outside but less than a minute later at 9:27 Atieh one-timed a pass from Williamson and found the five hole to tie it at 2. At 13:54 the Highlanders got caught on a long shift and Ridgewood’s first line capitalized with a high wrister over Ryan’s blocker. At 2:05 of the second period the Highlanders had a chance to retaliate while on the power play, but some lackadaisical stickwork behind the West Milford net led to a turnover and the short-handed goal that doubled Ridgewood’s lead. But Atieh answered only 45 seconds later by top shelving a beauty from the left face off circle, assisted by Barr and Williamson. Early in the third Atieh completed the hat trick by notching a short-handed goal of his own. Williamson picked up the speedy winger with a long head man pass and the sniper went in on the breakaway and backhanded a butterfly over the leg pads to tie it at 4. But then at 9:10 of the final stanza Ryan blocked a whistler from the left side, the puck popped high into the air, and then bounced off of a Highlander and into the net for the backbreaking goal. The Maroons pushed in a meaningless empty-netter with 30 seconds to go, and with the tally they closed out the Highlanders dreams of a 2006 Conference championship. Prior to the game All-Conference awards for the Northern Division, White Conference were announced and 3 West Milford Highlanders were named: Alex Barr, 1st team defense, Steve Williamson, Honorable Mention forward, and Sean Ryan, 1st team goaltender and Conference MVP.