Hopkins\Park Girls’ Hockey team were unsuccessful in their game against the Eden Prairie Eagles on Jan. 16, losing 5-1.

Junior Mary Gleason said she thinks the team put in a lot of effort.

“For our circumstances we played really well. We had a new girl come in and play goalie, our other goalie got hurt. I thought we played really good the first couple periods,” Gleason said. “We played well, but we just had a few moments where we were getting odd-man rushes and they were scoring.”

According to Gleason, positivity is one of the most important things in girls hockey and it is instrumental for success.

“We were very positive on the bench, this is a really good team, so (if we) just keep that intensity and keep that positivity up and (we’ll) do a lot better,” Gleason said.

Chris Erickson, one of the coaches for Hopkins\Park girls hockey, said he was also fairly happy with the amount of work ethic the girls portrayed in the game.

“I was very pleased with the effort the girls showed and it was the eighth grader Amelia Johnson’s first varsity game in net. She did very well and so did the girls in front of her,” Erickson said. “We had some scoring chances as well and it would have been a lot different score if we would have capitalized. Overall I was pleased with the effort.”

According to Gleason, getting shots off and scoring is very important to winning games.

“We were just getting shots off. Once you get shots off and get rebounds they’ll go in and it helped that we had a penalty,” Gleason said.

Erickson said that he was confident in the skating and game-winning abilities of his team.

“I think overall we can skate with everybody and we just have to work on finishing and scoring, but it just proves that Eden Prairie is one of the top teams in the state and we can probably skate with them we just have to capitalize on their mistakes and minimize ours,” Erickson said.

According to Erickson, the Hopkins\Park girls put their best effort out there, but it just didn’t go their way.

“We didn’t get a lot of puck up, but we went to the net all of the time and we had chances but it just didn’t happen and sometimes that’s just the way it goes,” Erickson said. “Eden Prairie capitalized on their chances and we didn’t, and that was the difference.”

Hopkins\Park will play next against Minnetonka Jan. 20 at Minnetonka High School at 2 p.m. For more information on the Hopkins\Park girls hockey team schedule visit hopkinsroyalsgirlshockey.shutterfly.com