The Hastings boy’s hockey team participated in the South St. Paul Premier Tournament over the holiday break. Eight area teams fought for the tournament championship over the course of three days and Hastings made it to the championship game on Saturday to take on the Woodbury Royals.

With all of the recent weather-related cancellations for games and practices, Raider Head Coach Matt Klein was not worried about three straight games for his team.

“It’s all relative,” he said. “Most high school teams have been limited in terms of practice lately, we just consider it a fun new way to condition.”

The first game of the tournament for Hastings was against South St. Paul. The Raiders dominated the Packers for all 51 minutes scoring three in the first, two in the second and two in the third while shutting down the Packer offense. There were seven goals by seven different Raiders; Charlie Williams, Austin Shanks, Mark DeNoyer, Connor Zgoda, John Teigland, Blake Vandehoef and Matt Sherry. Three of those goals were the first varsity goals for Sherry, Teigland and Williams.

The final of game one was 7-0 Hastings. Kody Niederkorn and Ryan Clemens combined for the shutout with a lot of help from the Raider defense. Niederkorn faced ten shots total between the first and second periods. With the Raiders leading 5-0, the coaching staff opted to give Niederkorn a break and Clemens a little extra game time. Unfortunately for Clemens, the Packers never made it to the Raider net and in his 17 minutes of play, he never saw a shot, an impressive feat for the Raider skaters. Conversely, Hastings put 29 shots on goal in the 70 win.

Hastings was 2-for-4 on the powerplay and 5-for-5 on the penalty kill. South St. Paul went to the box five times for 10 minutes and Hastings went six times for 12 minutes. Niederkorn was perfect in net, Clemens was as well.

“I really enjoyed how we finished and played really mature hockey in the third period,” said Klein. “We were great at getting pucks out at the blue line and deep at the goal line to allow our kids to continue to play and work selflessly while holding South St. Paul without a shot in the final period.”

Game two for the Raiders was against the Farmington Tigers and this game started off, well, off for both teams. Both teams struggled to control the puck and do basic things on the ice. Passes were not connecting, pucks were being dropped, it was uncharacteristically sloppy at times for the section foes. Perhaps it was nerves, maybe being tired from the game the day before and having so much time off previously due to weather, who knows, but the first period ended with the score tied at zero due to both keepers playing very well.

“We knew our first period against Farmington wasn't our best,” explained Klein. “Yet, very fortunate to have a great goaltender in Kody Niederkorn to keep the game scoreless, until we found our feet.”

The Raiders not only found their feet, but they also found the back of the net, twice. Charlie Williams scored a strange goal 12:18 into the period. Body Larsen connected with Mark De-Noyer who took a shot from the faceoff circle to the right of the Farmington goalie. The shot appeared to be stopped with a glove save, but this is where things get fuzzy watching it through the lens of a camera. Williams was waiting on the rebound chance, but it looked as though the goalies glove started to or completely came off with the puck in the glove. The picture sequence shows Williams fighting for the puck and the glove and puck entering the net. Williams may have even knocked the glove off. You can clearly see the glove in the net and the goalie’s bare hand in the picture. It was a strange goal, but a goal for Williams none the less and the Raiders had the 1-0 lead.

Hastings kept the pressure on and scored with just six seconds left in the period. This time it was DeNoyer with the help of Williams and Sawyer Zaruba.

“We had a great shift at the end of the second period, where we possessed the puck for just over two straight minutes in the offensive zone without any stoppage, which ended in a great rebound goal by DeNoyer, that provided some slight comfort with a two-goal lead,” added Klein.

That is where the game would finish, Hastings winning 2-0 and moving on to the championship game, but what conversation happened in between the first and second period that caused the Raiders to come out looking like a refreshed team?

“We talked about what makes us good,” said Klein. “We got back to our game and moved much better without the puck and took better routes in supporting the puck.”

Both teams successfully stopped every powerplay opportunity their opponents had. Hastings stopped four and Farmington stopped one. That number is going to seem very off when you read the penalty lines next, but keep in mind, there were several penalties that were coincidental minors, meaning the offenders went in at the same time for the same length of time. Farmington went to the box four times for eight minutes while Hastings had seven infractions, good for 25 minutes. Unfortunately, one of those infractions was a five-minute major with a 10-minute misconduct.

The strange thing about two of those seven penalties is they went against the goalie, Kody Niederkorn. It is extremely rare that a goalie gets called for any kind of penalty, so to see two of them was very odd. To be fair, the third period became very chippy for both teams and a minor scuffle did break out in Niederkorn’s goal crease. That scuffle did result in four players sitting down for two plus minutes to calm down and there could have been several more that joined them in the penalty box. The officials did a nice job of regaining control of the game quickly and the coaches quickly reigned in the emotion of their players on both teams, so kudos to them for making it a teachable moment.

Niederkorn was again perfect in net stopping all 24 shots. Hastings put up 36 shots on Farmington’s goalie, scoring twice.

Game three for Hastings, the Championship game, did not go well for the Raiders. Woodbury scored in the first for a 1-0 lead, then they extended that lead with four in the second period to go up 5-0 and put the game out of reach for Hastings. The Raiders finally scored two in the third period. The first was a power play goal by Brody Carlson 40 seconds into the period. 3:33 later, at the 4:13 mark, Brody Larsen and Danny Millner assisted Blake Vandehoef on his power play goal to make it 5-2 Woodbury.

The two goals were all Hastings netted, and the game finished 5-2 in favor of the Royals. Hastings went 2-for-4 on the power play, and they successfully stopped all three-man advantages for Woodbury. Woodbury did have only four penalties for eight minutes and Hastings had six minutes on three infractions.

Hastings managed to get 25 shots on goal and Niederkorn faced 30. For the game, he finished with a .833 save percentage. For the year he has a .917 save percentage and 2.35 goals against average having seen 192 shots on goal. Clemens has zeros for all his goals against stats because he faced no shots in his 17 minutes of play time.

After the tournament, Coach Klein spoke on Niederkorn’s performance so far this year.

“Kody is a talented goalie, with a strong mindset. Our goalie coaches do a really nice job working with him. Kody played very well throughout the whole tournament. I’m excited to see his efforts next week too,” he said.

The Raiders earned second place in a tournament with very talented teams and the boys should be proud of that, especially given the strange start to the season with weather related events. Even though this was a tournament, the games against conference and section opponents do count. The Raiders move to 2-1-0 in conference games and 1-0-1 in section games. Every win in both helps raise their chances of a higher seed come playoff time.

What is next for Hastings and what will the coaches work on with the team?

“It is a short week, and we have three games a week for the next three weeks as well,” said Coach Klein. “We’ll be working creating space in each zone and refining our routes when we have advantage opportunities.”

The short week is also a week of all away games, the first three all start at 7:00 p.m. First they will travel to Farmington on Jan. 3rd, then Eagan on Jan. 5th and finally Dodge County on Jan. 7th. The game in Rochester on Jan. 10th is against Century at Graham Arena complex at 7:15. If it is the same rink the girls were in, wear an extra layer of warmth because that one is a bit on the chilly side. The Raiders do return home on Jan. 11th to take on St. Louis Park at 7:30 p.m.

Cody Niederkorn has been lights out in goal for the Raiders this season. Two consecutive shutouts in the South St. Paul Premier tournament brought the Raiders to the Championship game. Photo by Bruce Karnick