We had a tough two games against MIAC opponent Hamline last weekend. We ended up getting a split with the win on our home ice on Thursday, 4-2, and the loss on Friday at Hamline, 5-2.
The story on Thursday was that we found a way to win without playing our best. We had great performances by senior goalie Tyler Nelson and sophomore forward Robb Stautz. Tyler made 39 saves on the night, while only giving up two goals. Robb had the game-winning goal and combined for a total of three points 2-1-3. Without the play of those two guys, we would have had a very tough time winning this game. Hamline carried the pressure a lot of the game and we gave up a total of 41 shots on net. We were very happy with the win, but the message after the game was that we need to get better and play much tougher on defense.
On Friday night, I felt confident and prepared going into the game. Things were going well, considering we were in the middle of the first “Snownami” of the season. We moved the bus up a half hour to make sure we made it on time. Once we got out of the St. Cloud area and closer to the cities, the roads got a lot better and we made it to Hamline right at 5pm. We generally like to get to games two hours before the start time. However, since Oscar Johnson rink is not the nicest place to play, we like getting there a little later. We got there in plenty of time and I was feeling good about our preparation and focus. With that said, we went out and once again got beat to a lot of pucks and lost a lot of battles. Before we knew it, they were up 2-0 and had outshot us 17-7 in the first period. Another issue in this game was our discipline and composure. We managed to take 8 penalties, one of which was a 5-minute major. So all together, we had to kill 17 minutes of penalties (we only had to kill 3 minutes of the major penalty due to another call against Hamline). We played almost a third of the game shorthanded. In short, we could not overcome the start that we had or the undisciplined penalties and we lost 5-2 with an empty-net goal against.
Looking forward to this weekend, we have two home games against non-conference opponents, Marian University on Saturday at 4:00 pm at St. Cloud State and Lawrence University on Sunday at 2:00 pm at SCSU. Both of these games will be challenging as both of these non-conference opponents have had some success in the past. We plan to use these games to get some guys in that have not played a lot yet to see who is ready to challenge for some more playing time down the stretch. I am excited to see players like sophomore Grady Ewing in a game. Grady has shown up every day and has worked extremely hard in practice. It will be great to see how he does against a good Division III opponent.
Finally, I thought I would give you a little look into our practice schedule this week. We play on Saturday and Sunday this weekend so it allows us to give the guys some time off with their families over the Thanksgiving break. We will practice at our regular times on Monday and Tuesday. We will then practice on Wednesday morning in order to let them get home to their families and enjoy their Thanksgivings. We will give them Thursday off and will get back on the ice on Friday for a good practice before we hit the ice in the games Saturday and Sunday.
Have a great Thanksgiving with your families and Go Johnnies!
