The first weekend of games is officially in the books. We managed to come out of the weekend with two wins. We beat Bethel on Friday night, 5-1, and beat Saint Mary’s, 1-0, Saturday night. It was great to get the two wins, but more importantly, it was great to get them with everyone in the lineup and to see the depth that we have.
On Friday night, we came out quick and scored 42 seconds into the game on the power play. Sophomore Cole Souto blasted a one-timer from the top of the circle to get the first goal of the year. Seven minutes later, sophomore Kyle Wagner added his first of the game to put us up 2-0 less than 10 minutes into the game. We finished the game up 5-1 with some huge performances by the Chitwood-Heppner-Wagner line. Wagner led the way with five points on the night, while Heppner and Chitwood both had four points. We also got a great performance in net by sophomore Andrew Lindgren, who made 23 saves on 24 shots. Finally, we lost Souto late in the first period to an injury, but it was not an injury that will affect his ability to play moving forward.
On Saturday night, we got all of the guys in the game that didn’t play the first night. This meant that we had four new defensemen, one new forward and a goalie that ended up standing on his head in this game. Freshmen goalie Mac Berglove was the story. In his college debut, he managed to get his first collegiate win and shutout. He played a great game, and to be honest, was the reason we won this game. We were not as sharp as we needed to be, but ended up getting the 1-0 win. Mac made all of the 30 saves that he faced. We got the game-winner from senior Captain Huba Sekesi about 8 minutes into the game and held that lead throughout. We got a win with a lot of new faces in the lineup, but also learned a lot about what we need to improve on moving forward.
Moving forward, we have two non-conference games this weekend against UW-River Falls on Friday and UW-Stout on Saturday. These are going to be great tests for our hockey team as these two programs have always had quality teams. The WIAC teams are always very tough, so I am looking forward to this challenge. It is also important to get through this weekend healthy, as we have three MIAC games the following week, starting with our home opener against Bethel on Tuesday, November 7th, at the National Hockey Center.
We are officially into the season and I am very excited to see how this team comes together these next couple of weeks. I feel that we have the team to accomplish great things.
