The Raiders Boys Hockey season ended with a 7-3 loss at home in the play in game for the Section 3AAAA tournament. Hastings was the eighth seed and Eagan was the ninth seed. With nine teams in the section, the bottom two teams held a play in game at Hastings Civic Arena on Feb. 28.
Matt Sherry kicked off the scoring at 5:44 in the first period. Finn Zaruba and Aden Cavness earned assists for the goal. The first period had a total of 25 shots, 17 for Hastings and eight for Eagan, the problem was, Eagan was more efficient, scoring a goal at 13:11 to tie the game.
The second period went crazy compared to the first. Eagan scored five goals in the first ten minutes, thirteen seconds. The goals happened so fast, no one noticed that Hastings swapped goalies after the fourth goal. Charlie Stoffel earned the start, but between the aggressive offense of Eagan and the not so good execution of defense by Hastings, Stoffel found himself on the bench after 25:53 of playing time. Things did not go much better for Nick Smelser. Smelser entered the game with the Raiders down 4-1 and 8:53 expired on the second period clock. Just over a minute later, Eagan scored twice within six seconds to go up 6-1 with just under 24 minutes left to play.
Hastings turned around and made things interesting and at 12:21, Brayden Krauth scored with the assist going to Carter Hanson. With 11 seconds left in the period, Hastings had a five-minute major power play opportunity and they scored their last goal of the season which doubled as Finn Zaruba’s first ever varsity goal. The power play goal was set up by Jon Harris and Krauth.
Unfortunately, Eagan did a great job mitigating the rest of the major penalty, shutting down the man advantage and taking all the wind out of the Raiders sails. Eagan scored once more to dagger the Raiders season in the third period and the 11-13-1 Raiders fell to the 4-21 Wildcats 7-3.
Overall, Hastings outshot Eagan 38-29. Both teams managed to score once on the power play. Eagan had 17 penalty minutes on seven infractions and the Raiders had 10 minutes on five infractions.
With the goalies splitting time, the stats were not split, so the two combined for 22 stops on 29 shots, good for a .759 save percentage.
Hastings finished the season 11-14-1 and will graduate nine. Aden Cavness, Gavin Burns, Luke Wahlstrom, Brody Geib, Brody Carlson, Brayden Krauth, Jon Harris, Matt Sherry and Jackson Dohman.
The final leaders of the season are:
Harris led all three offensive categories, 26 goals, 19 assists and 45 total points.
Brayden Krauth was second behind Harris with 13 goals, 16 assists and 29 points.
Cavness led the team in Penalty Minutes with 45, Lukas Niederkorn had 35.
Stoffel played for 897 minutes and 29 seconds and finished with a 5-12 record, 4.15 goals against average and a .894 save percentage. Smelser played 441:51, had a 6-2 record with a 2.65 goals against average and .901 save percentage.