Park boys hockey faced up against the number six ranked team Benilde St. Margaret’s on Jan.9 . Park fell short to a late game goal that put Benilde up by one. In a play to tie the game and go to overtime Park pulled their goalie, but that didn’t go in their favor, and Benilde scored an open-netter to finish the game off and win 3-1.
Head coach Tyler Broderson said he pulled the goalie earlier in the game and it sucked they didn’t get the puck.
“I think one of the things we talked about after the second period is if we were down by one goal, we had a chance to pull our goalie and see what happened and you know, we would take that 10 times out of 10,” Broderson said. “It’s just a bummer that they got the puck and scored against us.”
Junior Louis Piper said you’re antsy in the locker before during a rival game.
“We think about just keeping the nerves out of it,” Piper said. “I think you’re just antsy about the game and just ready to go out there and make a play for everybody. There was a good showing of people. There was a lot of energy in the building which got the boys going to make plays”.
Senior Sam Fuller said he thinks they could’ve been better on defense and in executing their game plan.
“ I think we could have played better defensively and played a more complete game.” Fuller said. “Blocking shots was the game plan, (and) good defensive zones. I’d say we did not execute it well enough.
Brodersen said he felt like they played their hearts out and left it all out on the rink.
“I think we left it all on the ice and it’s really tough to lose a game like that,” Broderson said. “But you know, if you do that every single time you’re gonna win a lot of those and do something special.”
According to Fuller he thinks they are going to work on getting shots up and more opportunities in practice.
“(We’re) just working on our goal scoring, getting pucks out of our own zone and blocking shots,” Fuller said. “Just getting more breakaways and communicating more”.
Piper said he thinks they need to bring this energy for all their games moving forward for the rest of the season.
“(We’re) just trying to build on this,” Piper said. “We can’t only bring intensity when we play Benilde. We got to play like that every single game and try to use games like this to get you ready for the playoffs.”
Boys hockey’s next game is at 7 p.m. Jan. 13 at the St. Louis Park Rec center against the Orono Spartans.
