On Jan. 7, Park boys hockey faced Totino-Grace and won 5-4. Park came out strong, going up 2-0 in the first period. However, the game got very close in the late third period and Park left the arena with a win.
Junior Brian Duncan said he felt good going into the game, although Totino-Grace has a good goalie and a strong first line. He said the offense would be essential to get a big win on the night.
“I was feeling good going into it. They’re a good team, but we knew that we could beat them,” Duncan said. “They have an excellent first line and goalie, so we knew we had to come out hard and play the best offense we could to give ourselves a chance from the start.”
Coach Tyler Brodersen said in between periods is a time for the team to take a break and reset after anything that went wrong. He said Park wanted to win the first and the second periods, but their lack of resetting during the second break caused them to struggle in the third period.
“We try to reset every period. Our goal before every game is to win the first and second periods,” Broderson said. “You want to win each period if you can. (That’s) our goal, so those breaks are just a time to reset. Between the second and third, we did not do a very good job of resetting, and that’s part of why we struggled in the third (period).”
Junior Owen Anklam said a major improvement during the season thus far has been scoring on power plays, considering that the team started the first six to seven games only scoring on 7% of power plays.
“Our power plays have gotten a lot better from the beginning of the season to now,” Anklam said. “We started the season scoring on about 7% of power plays, and now we’re up to about 20%, which is a great improvement from the first six (to) seven games.”
Brodersen said the team has been skating well with the top teams. He said utilizing the systems that the team have been working on in practice has helped them with their success.
“We’re skating well. We’re keeping up with these other top-end teams in a way we haven’t necessarily done in the past,” Brodersen said. “We’ve started to buy into our systems and do the little things we have been implementing in practice that will help us have success no matter who we’re playing against.”
Duncan said senior Trey Janssen’s goal was a great shot. He said it was a major momentum boost for the team, making the score 3-0 in the second period.
“Trey Janssen’s goal was pretty gross. It was a good personal effort and a very tough play, but he was able to slip it through a guy and went top bins (upper corner), passing a really good goalie,” Duncan said. “That was a huge goal to give the team a lot of momentum in the second period.”
Anklam said Park played well with a nice first period. He said the score was close in the end, but Park still came out on top.
“The team played good in the first two periods with lots of good opportunities and I liked going up 2-0 at the end of the first period because that gave us a nice cushion for the rest of the game,” Anklam said. “It got real close at the end but we still won.”
Park boys’ hockey’s next game is against Waconia 7:00 p.m. Jan. 16 at Waconia Ice Arena.