After a Jan. 6 game against Edina, senior Katie Fredrickson said competing against a talented team demonstrated Hopkins-Park’s perseverance.

“In this game specifically, I think we learned that we can stick with the best teams in the state, and when we put our minds to it, we can stick it through,” Fredrickson said.

Losing 6-1 against Edina, coach Chris Erickson said the team’s defense anticipated a tough game.

“We knew they were the top team in the state, and we knew that we’d have to play good defensively, and I thought we did,” Erickson said.

According to Erickson, the team showed great effort throughout the game.

“I was really proud of the way we played. Our defense played well, and we made some right choices — it’s just if you give them any time, they capitalize any mistake we made,” Erickson said.

Fredrickson said the team prepared for the game by focusing on trying to keep their opponent on the outside of the rink.

“They have some really skilled players, so we knew we needed to keep them to the outside and make sure they weren’t in good shooting spots because they could capitalize on those opportunities,” Fredrickson said.

According to Erickson, outside of the team’s strengths, some potential areas of improvement include increasing their shots on goal.

“Our defensive zone we played well. We picked up sticks, we kept them on the outside, those were some of the good things,” Erickson said. “I think we just need to shoot more and be ready to shoot and anticipate a little bit more.”

Fredrickson said the team felt prepared for the game and started out strong in the first period.

“We had a pretty good practice, and we knew that we had to work on our neutral zone coverage because they can move the puck really well,” Fredrickson said. “The first period was pretty good and the last half of the second period kind of fell off, but the first period was excellent.”

According to Erickson, this game established Hopkins-Park’s ability to compete against skilled teams.

“(If) you take a couple penalties away and a stretch of that four minutes in the second period, and we played pretty well,” Erickson said. “I think we proved that if you throw away that stretch, we can skate with them, and we just have to limit our mistakes. But I think (this game) proves we can skate with a lot of the teams in the state.”

Hopkins-Park’s next game will be 7 p.m. Jan. 9 at the Plymouth Ice Center against Wayzata.