Welcome back to week #4 of the SJU Hockey Blog. The story for this week is the fact that the last time SJU won a game where we didn’t score the first goal was January 18, 2014 (2 years prior to this weekend’s games against St. Olaf). I can be completely honest, I had no idea of this stat until my post-game interview with Jeff Brown of 660 WBHR (the Bear). He said “Congrats on breaking the streak” and continued to tell me it had been almost 2 years to the day since SJU won a game without scoring the first goal. I am not proud of this fact, but I am very happy to tell you prior to writing another word that we were able to break that curse this past weekend. It didn’t come easy as we didn’t score the first goal in either of the games on Friday or Saturday.
Our team jumped off to a great start in the first game; flying around and getting a lot of great chances. We then proceeded to give up a breakaway goal and found ourselves down 1-0 while leading in shots 8-2. We still felt good about how we were playing and continued to pepper St. Olaf’s goalie (son of Brett Hull) with shots. Finally, we were able to get one past the goaltender scoring from freshman #21 Connor Kelly. Unfortunately, that great feeling didn’t last long with St. Olaf gaining the one goal lead just over a minute later. We ended up outshooting St. Olaf 17-9 in the first period Friday night while still being down 2-1. The game would slow a bit in regards to shots, but I felt that we still carried a lot of the play. The game would end 4-2 with St. Olaf getting the win. This was more than disappointing as I felt we played a pretty good game, but we just couldn’t capitalize on opportunities and rebounds to get that puck past the St. Olaf goalie. We outshot St. Olaf 44-25, but that doesn’t get you a win. The streak continued until the following night.
Following the tough loss at home, we knew we needed to move forward and focus on playing our best hockey the next night at St. Olaf. The team got up in the morning and had a game day stretch followed by a short team meeting to go over some video from the night before. We decided to focus on the positives and showed the guys all of the great opportunities that we were able to create. We then finished with some things that would help us finish some of those chances by being more aware of second and third opportunities by tracking rebounds more effectively. On Friday night the St. Olaf goalie did a great job at making the first save, but was giving up some rebounds that we felt we could better capitalize on.
On Saturday night we bussed down to Northfield to take on the Oles in the Northfield County Arena. We decided to leave a little later seeing that this rink is one of the worst in the league. I should mention that it was freezing out (-15 degrees) and we knew that there would not be a great chance to warm up once we were there with limited locker room space and not many places to move around. I am grateful for the fans that made their way to Northfield to cheer on the boys – they came out in force.
The game started very similar to the night before with our team carrying a lot of the play. But once again St. Olaf took advantage of a tough turnover and took the lead 1-0. Three minutes later we tied the game once again with a goal from #21 Connor Kelly. Two minutes later, #28 Sam Valerius fired the puck past the goaltender to give SJU the lead. The period finished with SJU up 2-1. The second period started with Johnnies in the lead and finished with the game tied 2-2. We talked a lot after the second period about just playing the game and not stressing about everything. We used an analogy that the Navy Seals gave us last year in a team building event. We had to just go out there, smile, work, and trust in the process. SJU scored five third-period goals and won the game 7-2. SJU got goals from #11 Kevin Becker, #16 Dan McNamara, #10 Huba Sekesi, #21 Connor Kelly, and #19 Tyler Dunagan. I want to finish by giving some credit to #17 Mitch Fritz, #25 Dan Voce, and #28 Sam Valerius. They played the weekend as our fourth line, but I can say with complete confidence that they were our most consistent and effective line this past weekend. I am proud of those guys as they have all worked hard and earned every opportunity that they have gotten. All of the boys rallied to end with a decisive victory.
Some interesting stats from the weekend:
- SJU outshot St. Olaf in every period of the weekend.
- SJU outshot St. Olaf 81-46 on the weekend
- 7 different SJU players scored on the weekend (#21 Connor Kelly had 3 goals)
- 7 of SJU’s 9 goals were scored by freshmen or sophomores.
- 14 different Johnnies had a point on the weekend
- 10 of those 14 players recording a point were underclassmen.
Thank you for following Johnnie Hockey. Your support of our players is greatly appreciated. I enjoy sharing with you some of the internal dynamics of our Johnnie hockey program, the challenges we face, some conversations we have with the boys and the adjustments made to turn games around. My goal is to help you stay more connected to the great tradition of Johnnie hockey. Hope to see you at our Bethel series Thursday in St. Cloud and Saturday in Blaine. Go Johnnies!
