We only had one game this weekend due to a scheduling conflict with Hamline and their women’s team. We ended up losing to Hamline at the National Hockey Center on Saturday night 5-2. We had a 2-1 lead going into the 3rd period, but uncharacteristically gave up that lead and ended up losing the game.
Going into Saturday night, we had outscored our opponents 9-2 in the third period. In this game however, we gave up four unanswered goals in the third to lose 5-2. We have now outscored our opponent 9-6 in the 3rd period, and we have to regains some confidence in this situation after this past game.
I had been feeling that we were getting away with some things in the first five games of the year and fortunately had a five game winning streak entering the Saturday night game. Some of our mistakes and carelessness with the puck through the neutral zone finally came back to bite us.
With all that said, we are still 5-1 and we need to find a way to burn that last game and return to the moment this Friday night against St. Olaf. On Monday that work began and our team used this as a learning moment.
We play St. Olaf at 7:30pm Friday night in Northfield and then return home to play them again on a short turn around at 2pm on Saturday in St. Cloud at the Herb Brooks National Hockey Center. This is going to be a huge test of our endurance and our ability to recover. We need to understand the situation and make sure we start by playing a great game on Friday night, but making sure, we recover quickly to prepare for the game on Saturday afternoon.
St. Olaf is a well-coached program that is going to work very hard and pack things in defensively to protect the dangerous areas in front of the net. We have to be patient in these games and keep our composure when we have difficulties getting pucks through to the net. The key to these games is going to be which team wins the compete level. If we match their work ethic and out-compete them on pucks, I feel that our skill and depth will win this game.
We are looking for some payback this season, as the series against St. Olaf did not go as planned last season. We need our best performance this Friday to get this team back in the win column.
Thanks to everyone that came out and supported us this past Saturday and we look forward to redeeming ourselves in our own building this Saturday at 2pm.
Go Johnnies!!
